Taxes and Tithing

The coincidence this year of tax day with Easter and Passover celebrations has gotten me thinking. Is there anyone for whom tax preparation is truly a celebratory occasion? I couldn’t agree more with the idea of pooling resources to pay for services none of us could provide for ourselves alone and to take care of each other when times are hard. When I lived in the state, I was, as the lawn sign said, “Happy to pay for a better Minnesota.” In theory, paying taxes is an act of solidarity, an expression of caring. Still, this year as every year, I looked for every possible tax deduction and totaled up the numbers with a sense of dread, and I can’t say, as I dropped the envelope in the mail, that I had any real sense of adding to the wealth of love and caring in American society.

It would be easy to write off resentment of taxes to some innate selfishness in human beings, but history indicates that such resistance was not always in place. In ancient times, people willingly came together several times a year to sacrifice livestock to the gods. Moreover, in many cultures, people unquestioningly tithed a portion of their yield to support priests or other religious who owned no property of their own. These sacrifices and tithes were received during joyful community festivals accompanied by ritual and celebration.

It’s pretty hard to imagine similar festivals and celebrations around the paying of taxes, but why is that the case?

Part of the problem, I think, is that receiving government services hardly feels like being cared for. It’s hard not to be depressed by a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles, where crowds of tired people stand in line to be served by overworked, stressed out government workers whose job it is to move people through as quickly and impersonally as possible. A friend, one of the most compassionate people I know, works as a social worker for Hennepin County and tells me that it would be physically impossible to see all of the clients she’s supposed to see, so she finds herself hoping that some don’t show up, even though missed appointments are almost always a sign that things are not going well for that client.

Because receiving government services is generally unpleasant, and because there is such a stigma attached to many of those services, few who benefit from them feel grateful for them, much less express that gratitude, and this lack of appreciation from those who receive services makes it even harder to feel good about paying for them with our taxes.

What if, next year around this time, or even before that, as part of our election strategy, progressives organize a large-scale campaign focused around tax-supported services as acts of love of Americans for other Americans? Beyond a media campaign to counter the right-wing antipathy toward taxes, this action could include setting forth an initiative to make interactions with the government more rewarding. This initiative might include

• Funding social services sufficiently to permit adequate staffing, allowing social service providers more time to spend with clients, as well as enough time between clients for processing the emotions such work calls up
• Putting real energy into making the places where these services are delivered more welcoming
• Insisting that preference for government positions be given to people whose backgrounds indicate exceptional compassion, patience, and commitment to public service
• Conducting research into ways of making social service programs more effective, since part of the hesitance to pay taxes is doubt about how well our investments are paying off in making people’s lives qualitatively and quantitatively better, and also better publicizing the ways in which they are having that effect

The funding for these changes would come from insisting that all Americans, including the wealthy, pay their share, and from closing up corporate tax loopholes. (If anti-war sentiment continues to grow, it might also come from shifting even a small percentage of military funding into social services.)

Another reason that paying taxes doesn’t feel like tithing is that most of us have less faith in how the government is spending our money than we do in how charities or churches are spending it. This distrust of government is a signal that something is very much awry with our democracy. Government is not felt to be “of the people” anymore. For that reason, serious campaign finance reform would have to be part of any plan to improve how we feel about taxes. Only individuals—people with heartbeats, not corporate persons—should be permitted to make campaign contributions, and even those should be strictly limited to prevent the wealthy from having disproportionate influence. 

While measures like these may not meet with immediate success, they could serve to start a national dialogue about how to bring more love and compassion into our public life. If you have other ideas about how to further such a dialogue, please get in touch with us at the Network of Spiritual Progressives (www.spiritualprogressives.org) and help us make this happen!