The tax return is filed

After the last minute work has been completed, what can anyone say?



Thought for the Day, 29 January 2010

Rhidian Brook

Today there will be a lot of people in Britain scrabbling to beat Monday's tax assessment deadline and so avoid the £100 fine. One man who won't be rushing to fill out his forms is the singer and activist Billy Bragg who has threatened not to pay his tax in protest at the bonuses being paid out by Royal Bank of Scotland. He's calling on the government to limit the proposed £1.5 billion that the bank wants to pay out despite the tax-payer owning 84% of it. And he's set up a protest website to rally support.

I confess I was tempted to sign up: as one of the 9 million self-employed I'm about to pay my annual tax and a bit of me always wants to avoid doing so. Every year, I go through the same internal process: I spend a few days moaning about giving my hard earned money to the taxman then I take a walk to my daughter's free school past the just-collected bins, or take a trip to the hospital to get that x ray and it reminds me where the money goes. Not unlike my American friend who lived here for a while and complained at the amount of tax we paid - until he got sick.

Like my friend's forebears, a revolutionary might well refuse to pay their tax on ethical grounds and end up starting a new country. But arguably it's just as radical to pay tax as not to pay tax, seeing in taxation a simple and just way of sharing wealth and resources - which recent stats concerning the gulf between rich and poor in the UK suggest is a serious issue. But the radical Bragg - who once sang "I don't want to change the world, I'm just looking for a new England" - isn't really asking whether tax is right or wrong or even right or left; his little protest is aimed at a group of people he perceives to be rendering unto themselves before they render unto Caesar.

It has echoes of that infamous exchange where the Pharisees ask Jesus if it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. With this question they must have thought they had the loudmouth, self-employed, rebel stitched up like Galilean kipper. If he said yes, he'd be blaspheming; if he said no, he'd be preaching rebellion to Rome. They were probably already picturing the headlines: "Nazareth agitator plans to bring down state." But instead of answering them directly Jesus took the coin with Caesar's image on it and advised them to give to Caesar what was clearly his. Before adding the killer instruction "to give to God what was God's."

As tax advice goes the first part of his answer is straightforward enough, but the second part seems to raise the stakes. "Give to God what is God's"? How much is that? Even if we are not sure what we should give or what belongs to God, Jesus seems to be challenging his listeners to work out where their priorities and ultimate allegiances lie - in all areas of their lives. Perhaps, then, this is something we can meditate on whilst performing the seemingly unspiritual task of filling out our tax forms.

copyright 2010 BBC

This can also be seen at http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thought/documents/t20100129.shtml