taxation

• tithing in light and life

55:3.2Hu­man gov­ern­ment in the con­duct of ma­te­rial af­fairs con­tin­ues to func­tion through­out this age of rel­a­tive prog­ress and per­fec­tion. The pub­lic ac­tiv­i­ties of a world in the first stage of light and life which I re­cently vis­ited were fi­nanced by the tithing tech­nique. Ev­ery adult worker—and all able-bod­ied cit­i­zens worked at some­thing—paid ten per cent of his in­come or in­crease to the pub­lic trea­sury, and it was dis­bursed as fol­lows:

• inheritance tax › 100% for primitive man

69:9.31. The fam­ily. Man not only craves to ac­cu­mu­late prop­erty; he de­sires to be­queath his cap­i­tal goods to his progeny. But in early com­mu­nal so­ci­ety a man’s cap­i­tal was ei­ther im­me­di­ately con­sumed or dis­tributed among the group at his death. There was no in­her­i­tance of prop­erty—the in­her­i­tance tax was one hun­dred per cent. The later cap­i­tal-ac­cu­mu­la­tion and prop­erty-in­her­i­tance mores were a dis­tinct so­cial ad­vance. And this is true not­with­stand­ing the sub­se­quent gross abuses at­ten­dant upon the mis­use of cap­i­tal.

• inheritance tax › 100% for primitive man
• inheritance tax › primitive funerals held up until family donated large sums to king

69:9.64. The urge for se­cu­rity and power. Com­mu­nism was fi­nally de­stroyed by the de­cep­tive prac­tices of pro­gres­sive and suc­cess­ful in­di­vid­u­als who re­sorted to di­verse sub­terfuges in an ef­fort to es­cape en­slave­ment to the shift­less idlers of their tribes. But at first all hoard­ing was se­cret; prim­i­tive in­se­cu­rity pre­vented the out­ward ac­cu­mu­la­tion of cap­i­tal. And even at a later time it was most dan­ger­ous to amass too much wealth; the king would be sure to trump up some charge for con­fis­cat­ing a rich man’s prop­erty, and when a wealthy man died, the fu­neral was held up un­til the fam­ily do­nated a large sum to pub­lic wel­fare or to the king, an in­her­i­tance tax.

• tithing was early form of taxation

70:7.18These clubs were em­ployed by mer­chants to col­lect debts and by rulers to col­lect taxes. Tax­a­tion has been a long strug­gle, one of the ear­li­est forms be­ing the tithe, one tenth of the hunt or spoils. Taxes were orig­i­nally levied to keep up the king’s house, but it was found that they were eas­ier to col­lect when dis­guised as an of­fer­ing for the sup­port of the tem­ple ser­vice.

• avoid enslavement of citizenry by state

70:12.159. Tax­a­tion en­slave­ment of the cit­i­zenry by the state.

• must support state without handicapping industry

71:5.2The ideal state un­der­takes to reg­u­late so­cial con­duct only enough to take vi­o­lence out of in­di­vid­ual com­pe­ti­tion and to pre­vent un­fair­ness in per­sonal ini­tia­tive. Here is a great prob­lem in state­hood: How can you guar­an­tee peace and quiet in in­dus­try, pay the taxes to sup­port state power, and at the same time pre­vent tax­a­tion from hand­i­cap­ping in­dus­try and keep the state from be­com­ing par­a­sit­i­cal or tyran­ni­cal?

• citizenry must control

71:8.64. The abil­ity of the cit­i­zenry to con­trol the levy­ing of taxes.

• in continental nation › property tax limited; homes exempt

72:3.1On this con­ti­nent it is against the law for two fam­i­lies to live un­der the same roof. And since group dwellings have been out­lawed, most of the ten­e­ment type of build­ings have been de­mol­ished. But the un­mar­ried still live in clubs, ho­tels, and other group dwellings. The small­est home­site per­mit­ted must pro­vide fifty thou­sand square feet of land. All land and other prop­erty used for home pur­poses are free from tax­a­tion up to ten times the min­i­mum home­site al­lot­ment.

72:7.1The fed­eral gov­ern­ment is pa­ter­nal­is­tic only in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of old-age pen­sions and in the fos­ter­ing of ge­nius and cre­ative orig­i­nal­ity; the state gov­ern­ments are slightly more con­cerned with the in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zen, while the lo­cal gov­ern­ments are much more pa­ter­nal­is­tic or so­cial­is­tic. The city (or some sub­di­vi­sion thereof) con­cerns it­self with such mat­ters as health, san­i­ta­tion, build­ing reg­u­la­tions, beau­ti­fi­ca­tion, wa­ter sup­ply, light­ing, heat­ing, recre­ation, mu­sic, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

72:7.2In all in­dus­try first at­ten­tion is paid to health; cer­tain phases of phys­i­cal well-be­ing are re­garded as in­dus­trial and com­mu­nity pre­rog­a­tives, but in­di­vid­ual and fam­ily health prob­lems are mat­ters of per­sonal con­cern only. In med­i­cine, as in all other purely per­sonal mat­ters, it is in­creas­ingly the plan of gov­ern­ment to re­frain from in­ter­fer­ing.

72:7.3Cities have no tax­ing power, nei­ther can they go in debt. They re­ceive per capita al­lowances from the state trea­sury and must sup­ple­ment such rev­enue from the earn­ings of their so­cial­is­tic en­ter­prises and by li­cens­ing var­i­ous com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties.

72:7.4The rapid-tran­sit fa­cil­i­ties, which make it prac­ti­cal greatly to ex­tend the city bound­aries, are un­der mu­nic­i­pal con­trol. The city fire de­part­ments are sup­ported by the fire-pre­ven­tion and in­sur­ance foun­da­tions, and all build­ings, in city or coun­try, are fire­proof—have been for over sev­enty-five years.

72:7.5There are no mu­nic­i­pally ap­pointed peace of­fi­cers; the po­lice forces are main­tained by the state gov­ern­ments. This de­part­ment is re­cruited al­most en­tirely from the un­mar­ried men be­tween twenty-five and fifty. Most of the states as­sess a rather heavy bach­e­lor tax, which is re­mit­ted to all men join­ing the state po­lice. In the av­er­age state the po­lice force is now only one tenth as large as it was fifty years ago.

• in continental nation › property tax limited; homes exempt

72:7.6There is lit­tle or no uni­for­mity among the tax­a­tion schemes of the one hun­dred com­par­a­tively free and sov­er­eign states as eco­nomic and other con­di­tions vary greatly in dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the con­ti­nent. Ev­ery state has ten ba­sic con­sti­tu­tional pro­vi­sions which can­not be mod­i­fied ex­cept by con­sent of the fed­eral su­preme court, and one of these ar­ti­cles pre­vents levy­ing a tax of more than one per cent on the value of any prop­erty in any one year, home­sites, whether in city or coun­try, be­ing ex­empted.

72:7.7The fed­eral gov­ern­ment can­not go in debt, and a three-fourths ref­er­en­dum is re­quired be­fore any state can bor­row ex­cept for pur­poses of war. Since the fed­eral gov­ern­ment can­not in­cur debt, in the event of war the Na­tional Coun­cil of De­fense is em­pow­ered to as­sess the states for money, as well as for men and ma­te­ri­als, as it may be re­quired. But no debt may run for more than twenty-five years.

72:7.8In­come to sup­port the fed­eral gov­ern­ment is de­rived from the fol­low­ing five sources:

• in continental nation › import duties

72:7.91. Im­port du­ties. All im­ports are sub­ject to a tar­iff de­signed to pro­tect the stan­dard of liv­ing on this con­ti­nent, which is far above that of any other na­tion on the planet. These tar­iffs are set by the high­est in­dus­trial court af­ter both houses of the in­dus­trial congress have rat­i­fied the rec­om­men­da­tions of the chief ex­ec­u­tive of eco­nomic af­fairs, who is the joint ap­pointee of these two leg­isla­tive bod­ies. The up­per in­dus­trial house is elected by la­bor, the lower by cap­i­tal.

72:7.102. Roy­al­ties. The fed­eral gov­ern­ment en­cour­ages in­ven­tion and orig­i­nal cre­ations in the ten re­gional lab­o­ra­to­ries, as­sist­ing all types of ge­niuses—artists, au­thors, and sci­en­tists—and pro­tect­ing their patents. In re­turn the gov­ern­ment takes one half the prof­its re­al­ized from all such in­ven­tions and cre­ations, whether per­tain­ing to ma­chines, books, artistry, plants, or an­i­mals.

• in continental nation › inheritance tax up to 50%

72:7.113. In­her­i­tance tax. The fed­eral gov­ern­ment levies a grad­u­ated in­her­i­tance tax rang­ing from one to fifty per cent, de­pend­ing on the size of an es­tate as well as on other con­di­tions.

72:7.124. Mil­i­tary equip­ment. The gov­ern­ment earns a con­sid­er­able sum from the leas­ing of mil­i­tary and naval equip­ment for com­mer­cial and recre­ational us­ages.

72:7.135. Nat­u­ral re­sources. The in­come from nat­u­ral re­sources, when not fully re­quired for the spe­cific pur­poses des­ig­nated in the char­ter of fed­eral state­hood, is turned into the na­tional trea­sury.

72:7.14Fed­eral ap­pro­pri­a­tions, ex­cept war funds as­sessed by the Na­tional Coun­cil of De­fense, are orig­i­nated in the up­per leg­isla­tive house, con­curred in by the lower house, ap­proved by the chief ex­ec­u­tive, and fi­nally val­i­dated by the fed­eral bud­get com­mis­sion of one hun­dred. The mem­bers of this com­mis­sion are nom­i­nated by the state gov­er­nors and elected by the state leg­is­la­tures to serve for twenty-four years, one quar­ter be­ing elected ev­ery six years. Ev­ery six years this body, by a three-fourths bal­lot, chooses one of its num­ber as chief, and he thereby be­comes di­rec­tor-con­trol­ler of the fed­eral trea­sury.

• historically › by ancient Egyptian ruler

89:4.9It was no empty boast that a cer­tain Egyp­tian ruler made when he stated that he had sac­ri­ficed: 113,433 slaves, 493,386 head of cat­tle, 88 boats, 2,756 golden im­ages, 331,702 jars of honey and oil, 228,380 jars of wine, 680,714 geese, 6,744,428 loaves of bread, and 5,740,352 sacks of corn. And in or­der to do this he must needs have sorely taxed his toil­ing sub­jects.

• historically › half-shekel tax to support Jerusalem temple
• historically › Jesus’ family had difficulty paying taxes

126:5.5The pay of a com­mon day-la­bor­ing car­pen­ter was slowly di­min­ish­ing. By the end of this year Je­sus could earn, by work­ing early and late, only the equiv­a­lent of about twenty-five cents a day. By the next year they found it dif­fi­cult to pay the civil taxes, not to men­tion the syn­a­gogue as­sess­ments and the tem­ple tax of one-half shekel. Dur­ing this year the tax col­lec­tor tried to squeeze ex­tra rev­enue out of Je­sus, even threat­en­ing to take his harp.

126:5.6Fear­ing that the copy of the Greek scrip­tures might be dis­cov­ered and con­fis­cated by the tax col­lec­tors, Je­sus, on his fif­teenth birth­day, pre­sented it to the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue li­brary as his ma­tu­rity of­fer­ing to the Lord.

• historically › Jesus’ family had difficulty paying taxes

127:3.1In the course of this year all the fam­ily prop­erty, ex­cept the home and gar­den, was dis­posed of. The last piece of Ca­per­naum prop­erty (ex­cept an eq­uity in one other), al­ready mort­gaged, was sold. The pro­ceeds were used for taxes, to buy some new tools for James, and to make a pay­ment on the old fam­ily sup­ply and re­pair shop near the car­a­van lot, which Je­sus now pro­posed to buy back since James was old enough to work at the house shop and help Mary about the home. With the fi­nan­cial pres­sure thus eased for the time be­ing, Je­sus de­cided to take James to the Pass­over. They went up to Je­ru­sa­lem a day early, to be alone, go­ing by way of Samaria. They walked, and Je­sus told James about the his­toric places en route as his fa­ther had taught him on a sim­i­lar jour­ney five years be­fore.

• excessive t. interferes with individual liberties

134:6.10The in­di­vid­ual will en­joy far more lib­erty un­der world gov­ern­ment. To­day, the cit­i­zens of the great pow­ers are taxed, reg­u­lated, and con­trolled al­most op­pres­sively, and much of this pres­ent in­ter­fer­ence with in­di­vid­ual lib­er­ties will van­ish when the na­tional gov­ern­ments are will­ing to trus­tee their sov­er­eignty as re­gards in­ter­na­tional af­fairs into the hands of global gov­ern­ment.

• historically › half-shekel tax to support Jerusalem temple

157:1.1As Je­sus, with An­drew and Pe­ter, tar­ried by the lake near the boat­shop, a tem­ple-tax col­lec­tor came upon them and, rec­og­niz­ing Je­sus, called Pe­ter to one side and said: “Does not your Mas­ter pay the tem­ple tax?” Pe­ter was in­clined to show in­dig­na­tion at the sug­ges­tion that Je­sus should be ex­pected to con­tribute to the main­te­nance of the re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties of his sworn en­e­mies, but, not­ing a pe­cu­liar ex­pres­sion on the face of the tax col­lec­tor, he rightly sur­mised that it was the pur­pose to en­trap them in the act of re­fus­ing to pay the cus­tom­ary half shekel for the sup­port of the tem­ple ser­vices at Je­ru­sa­lem. Ac­cord­ingly, Pe­ter replied: “Why of course the Mas­ter pays the tem­ple tax. You wait by the gate, and I will pres­ently re­turn with the tax.”

• historically › half-shekel tax to support Jerusalem temple

157:1.3All of this had been over­heard by the se­cret mes­sen­ger of David who stood near by, and who then sig­naled to an as­so­ciate, fish­ing near the shore, to come in quickly. When Pe­ter made ready to go out in the boat for a catch, this mes­sen­ger and his fish­er­man friend pre­sented him with sev­eral large bas­kets of fish and as­sisted him in car­ry­ing them to the fish mer­chant near by, who pur­chased the catch, pay­ing suf­fi­cient, with what was added by the mes­sen­ger of David, to meet the tem­ple tax for the three. The col­lec­tor ac­cepted the tax, for­go­ing the penalty for tardy pay­ment be­cause they had been for some time ab­sent from Gal­i­lee.

• historically › half-shekel tax to support Jerusalem temple

173:1.3But traf­fic in sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and sundry mer­chan­dise was not the only way in which the courts of the tem­ple were pro­faned. At this time there was fos­tered an ex­ten­sive sys­tem of bank­ing and com­mer­cial ex­change which was car­ried on right within the tem­ple precincts. And this all came about in the fol­low­ing man­ner: Dur­ing the As­monean dy­nasty the Jews coined their own sil­ver money, and it had be­come the prac­tice to re­quire the tem­ple dues of one-half shekel and all other tem­ple fees to be paid with this Jew­ish coin. This reg­u­la­tion ne­ces­si­tated that money-chang­ers be li­censed to ex­change the many sorts of cur­rency in cir­cu­la­tion through­out Pales­tine and other prov­inces of the Ro­man Em­pire for this or­tho­dox shekel of Jew­ish coin­ing. The tem­ple head tax, payable by all ex­cept women, slaves, and mi­nors, was one-half shekel, a coin about the size of a ten-cent piece but twice as thick. By the times of Je­sus the priests had also been ex­empted from the pay­ment of tem­ple dues. Ac­cord­ingly, from the 15^th to the 25^th of the month pre­ced­ing the Pass­over, ac­cred­ited money-chang­ers erected their booths in the prin­ci­pal cities of Pales­tine for the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing the Jew­ish peo­ple with proper money to meet the tem­ple dues af­ter they had reached Je­ru­sa­lem. Af­ter this ten-day pe­riod these money-chang­ers moved on to Je­ru­sa­lem and pro­ceeded to set up their ex­change ta­bles in the courts of the tem­ple. They were per­mit­ted to charge the equiv­a­lent of from three to four cents com­mis­sion for the ex­change of a coin val­ued at about ten cents, and in case a coin of larger value was of­fered for ex­change, they were al­lowed to col­lect dou­ble. Like­wise did these tem­ple bankers profit from the ex­change of all money in­tended for the pur­chase of sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and for the pay­ment of vows and the mak­ing of of­fer­ings.

• historically › right of coinage carried right to levy taxes

174:2.5In all this the en­e­mies of Je­sus were de­feated since it was a well-known rul­ing of the San­hedrin, made for the guid­ance of the Jews dis­persed among the gen­tile na­tions, that the “right of coinage car­ried with it the right to levy taxes.” In this man­ner Je­sus avoided their trap. To have an­swered “No” to their ques­tion would have been equiv­a­lent to in­cit­ing re­bel­lion; to have an­swered “Yes” would have shocked the deep-rooted na­tion­al­ist sen­ti­ments of that day. The Mas­ter did not evade the ques­tion; he merely em­ployed the wis­dom of mak­ing a dou­ble re­ply. Je­sus was never eva­sive, but he was al­ways wise in his deal­ings with those who sought to ha­rass and de­stroy him.

• historically › Jesus paid taxes to Caesar and the temple

185:3.1Pi­late took Je­sus and John Zeb­e­dee into a pri­vate cham­ber, leav­ing the guards out­side in the hall, and re­quest­ing the pris­oner to sit down, he sat down by his side and asked sev­eral ques­tions. Pi­late be­gan his talk with Je­sus by as­sur­ing him that he did not be­lieve the first count against him: that he was a per­verter of the na­tion and an in­citer to re­bel­lion. Then he asked, “Did you ever teach that trib­ute should be re­fused Cae­sar?” Je­sus, point­ing to John, said, “Ask him or any other man who has heard my teach­ing.” Then Pi­late ques­tioned John about this mat­ter of trib­ute, and John tes­ti­fied con­cern­ing his Mas­ter’s teach­ing and ex­plained that Je­sus and his apos­tles paid taxes both to Cae­sar and to the tem­ple. When Pi­late had ques­tioned John, he said, “See that you tell no man that I talked with you.” And John never did re­veal this mat­ter.

• historically › overtaxation was a reason for decline of Rome

195:3.9Even a good re­li­gion could not save a great em­pire from the sure re­sults of lack of in­di­vid­ual par­tic­i­pa­tion in the af­fairs of gov­ern­ment, from over­much pa­ter­nal­ism, over­tax­a­tion and gross col­lec­tion abuses, un­bal­anced trade with the Lev­ant which drained away the gold, amuse­ment mad­ness, Ro­man stan­dard­iza­tion, the degra­da­tion of woman, slav­ery and race deca­dence, phys­i­cal plagues, and a state church which be­came in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized nearly to the point of spir­i­tual bar­ren­ness.