The C.A.T. Principle – Global Ebook Awards GOLD & SILVER Winner for Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook of 2014 & 2016

Taxes: It’s that Time of Year Again…

Taxes: It's that Time of Year Again...Taxes: It’s that Time of Year Again…

It was the great Renaissance man Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) who wrote in a 1789 letter that “Our new Constitution is established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.”

Even old Ben, a Founding Father of the United States, had to admit that taxes were as certain as death. (A good Colombian friend tells me that where he’s from only death is certain.) Given their importance, particularly for those who pay ever more earnings toward them, it’s time to decipher what they are.

Taxes are resources (i.e. money) that individuals pool to pay for things that all can benefit from. Where the individual might not survive alone, the group, by helping one another, can. In pioneering times, people chipped in knowing that the scourge of weather and hunger were never far off. If a barn burned down, everyone lent a hand to rebuild it. If a road needed building, all took up shovel and spade. Everyone knew everyone, and everyone was everyone’s brother’s keeper.

With time, it made sense to entrench this willingness to help. A tax was raised to share the cost for services and things (i.e. police, fire, roads and whatever else deemed necessary) required by a functioning and productive group of individuals.  A tax isn’t so much born as it is an inherent part of life, that is, if individuals are to advance into something greater than what they can be on their own. Libertarians may gasp at the aforementioned, and I’m no fan of big government, however, like much in life, moderation and balance are keys to an effective existence.

The challenge we find ourselves in today is that modern Western democracies have run amok in taxation. A leading U.S. independent tax policy nonprofit, The Tax Foundation, calculated U.S. Tax Freedom Day as April 24th. The Fraser Institute states Canadians need wait another six weeks before shrugging off their tax chains on June 7th.  Gone are the days of burden sharing to help our neighbors. Instead, we live in an era of big government, bloated departments and anonymous bureaucrats.

Is it all bad? Not necessarily, as government has its role and place. But when that role and place becomes an ever-increasing expense to those producing the taxes, we’d be wise to remember that every camel’s back has a breaking point. The entitlement of people (see Entitlement: The Truth Uncovered…) wanting government to tax, tax and tax some more can’t go on forever, lest we fall into a death spiral of want and need. Venezuela’s fiasco points to this, which in itself harks back to the fallen communist regimes of yesteryear in Eastern Europe.

It’s our duty to pay our taxes, but it’s also our duty to ensure that democracy endures and thrives. We must ensure that government never becomes bigger than the people it rules, and we must ensure that hard-earned tax dollars are never woefully wasted. Government must be accountable to the people. Without accountability, there can be no democracy, and without democracy, serfdom awaits us all..

Taxes, it’s that time of year again…

For more check out the Global Ebook Awards GOLD & SILVER Winner of 2014 & 2016, The C.A.T. Principle: Change, Action, Trust – Words to Live By available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. See the latest Amazon reviews here.

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The C.A.T. Principle

A 2014 Global Ebook Awards GOLD Winner for Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook.

A 2016 Global Ebook Awards SILVER Winner for Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook.

 

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