Hilton Head Island, SC – September 24, 2023
The Chapel Without Walls
II Kings 23:31-37; Romans 13:1-7
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. – Romans 13:6 (RSV)
The Internal Revenue Service is probably the least popular agency in the federal government. The very mention of the IRS can give people spikes in blood pressure, hives, or heart palpitations.
The concept of taxes is not a new idea in human history. As long as there have been governments anywhere, there have been taxes that were levied on citizens living within the boundaries of those geographic entities. Government cannot operate without funding, and through the centuries many different schemes for raising revenue have been instituted: income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, value-added taxes, excise taxes, import taxes, export taxes, and tariffs.
In biblical Judah, government essentially consisted of the king, his court, and the army. The historical section of the Hebrew Bible tells of the triumphs and travails of each of the kings. At the end of each brief biography, it says whether that particular monarch “did that which was good (or evil) in the sight of the Lord.” The authors, all of whom were from Judah, said that there were no good kings at all in Israel, the northern kingdom, but there were only five monarchs who received a positive rating in Judah, the southern kingdom. There has always been a sizeable percentage of people who distrust and/or dislike government in any form.
By about 600 BCE, Judah had become weak, and Egypt was strong. Pharoah Neco of Egypt came and demanded tribute from the Judeans. Josiah had been a good king, but his son Jehoahaz was not, and he lasted only three months on the throne. Neco imprisoned him, and replaced him with Eliakim, another of Josiah’s sons by another wife. For some reason Neco changed his name to Jehoiakim, but it doesn’t say why.
It became Jehoiakim’s distasteful duty to raise the tribute that the pharaoh demanded from Judah. He taxed the owners of all the farms of the land, and for the subjects who had no land but had gold and silver, the king took a portion of that from them. These taxes were collected to pay the pharaoh what he demanded, and no one could avoid them. But no more exactions were required, either. Nonetheless, everyone, especially Jehoiakim, was unhappy.
In modern-day America, in order to avoid having to pay taxes, laws are passed by Congress that allow people to have exemptions and deductions. They encourage taxpayers to invest in government-sponsored programs that benefit society as a whole, such as savings bonds or federal, state, or local infrastructure projects. Other tax laws allow deductions for many other financial dealings. The problem with that is that most citizens have enough income to live on, but little left over to invest. The result is that the wealthy are the only people with sufficient surpluses to invest heavily in these projects. When April 15 rolls around, with the help of a highly complex tax code and knowledgeable certified public accountants, very affluent citizens may end up paying their taxes at a lower rate than average-income people. Warren Buffett is a billionaire and the CEO of one of the nation’s best-known investment companies. He has noted the fact that he pays taxes at a lower rate than his secretary. Honorable man that he is, and generous philanthropist that he is, he complains that is unfair, and he is correct.
There will never be universal approval of all the fine print in the federal tax code, nor shall everyone agree on how many tax brackets there are or what their lower and upper limits should be. A small but vocal minority insist on a flat income tax, meaning everyone pays the same percentage of their taxable income. That notion will never get off the ground. There will aways be a graduated income tax, which is the only fair tax system.
The lowest-income Americans pay little or nothing in taxes. Many people think that is fair, but others do not. The highest-income citizens pay by far the highest percentage of the total revenue collected by the IRS, but they don’t necessarily pay the highest percentage of their income. Because they are able to utilize far more deductions and exemptions than most people, the percentage of their income that they pay in taxes may be considerably lower than middle-income or particularly upper-middle-income people.
The old song says, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” It isn’t true that the poor always get poorer, but without some kind of government help not many can escape their poverty. And unless those who have millions of dollars in income each year are either very unwise in their investments or are very ill-advised by their investment advisors, they cannot escape getting richer, unless they give away great amounts of their income.
The term “self-made man” connotes someone who earned every dollar he ever made. The more dollars one makes, the more likely it is that he is not self-made, because more and more of those dollars indirectly come from the labor of other people or from corporations he invested in. The myth of the self-made man or more accurately the self-made person is only that: a myth.
There are “self-made people” in Haiti or Mali, but there aren’t any in the United States of America, either. Anyone who is rich in Haiti or Mali probably got that way illegally or unethically, but millions of Americans get rich, most of them primarily because they have the good fortune to live in America. Many wealthy people are also wealthy because they inherited wealth, and were wise in making that wealth grow. Billionaires are so wealthy that they could never spend it all if they tried. Hundreds of houses sell on Hilton Head Island for a million dollars or more, but many of them are second or third homes for folks who have tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in other assets.
The infamous bank robber Willie Sutton was once asked why he robbed banks. He gave a prompt and terse answer. He said, “Because that’s where the money is.” In a similar manner, the IRS now needs to go to the inordinately wealthy, because that’s where the money is. The IRS has asked Congress to appropriate more money for them to hire a few thousand agents to check the tax returns of the Really Really Rich. Middle income earners have been assessed all they are able to pay. In general, it is primarily the top 5 to 10% of Americans in income who have avoiding paying their fair share of taxes, because they have so many more means of avoiding taxes.
Jesus said, “Everyone to whom much is given, of him will much be required, and of him to whom men commit much they will demand the more” (Luke 12:48). By whatever method it is that the assets of anyone increase, many other people helped make that increase possible. Therefore God expects more tax exactions from the wealthiest among us, because society relies more on them to enhance the lives of those among whom they live.
In 1965, the ratio between the income of the average CEO of American corporations and the average worker was 20-to-1. In 2022 it was 399-to-one. This disparity is one of the main reasons the United Autoworkers have said they are on strike. The Tax Reform Act of 2016 benefitted the highest income Americans, but its reductions did not trickle down to most of the rest.
International polls indicate that the people of Scandinavia are the happiest people in the world. They also have some of the highest taxes in the world. How can they be so happy if they are taxed so heavily? It may be because their governments take measures that spread out tax revenues more broadly to the people as a whole through various government programs. In that way everyone feels more secure. If people feel personally secure, they seem to be more content.
One of the issues on which the members of Congress have the most difficulty in coming to a consensus is the annual attempt to write a national budget. Earlier this year their impasse almost caused a government shutdown. Because of that, our national credit rating dropped one level from the highest rating it has always managed to maintain. Right now another shutdown is facing us, and once again Congress may stave it off by funding essential things, again waiting to vote on other things. No one can accuse Congress of being sensible and courageous in their legislating.
People complain that the government wastes too much money, and no doubt sometimes it does. However, it is not alone in that department. Business also wastes at least some money, as does the military, education, agriculture, religion, and every other social institution. It is impossible for every dollar in every human enterprise to be used wisely or productively. But because it is taxpayers who ultimately fund every dollar the government spends, we find it easier and more pleasurable to blame them if things do not go the way we think they should.
The great Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote, “Taxes are the price we pay for civilized society.” They are a necessary feature of what political philosophers call the social contract. Without taxes, we could not exist as a people. Because of them, our lives are enormously enhanced, even if we choose not to recognize that.
The Department of Agriculture provides food for millions of needy Americans. The Department of Health and Human Services employs social workers and medical personnel to assist people in need. The Agency for International Development and the Peace Corps teach people in underdeveloped nations how to build businesses and improve farming methods and establish better health care.
No American workers who are paid the minimum federal wage of $7.25 can live on that amount of money if they work only forty hours a week, even if they are single people. Most of those working for minimum wages must have two or three jobs, but some people are too incapacitated to work at all. A few years ago there was an effort in Congress to pass a federal law that would set the minimum wage at $15.00 an hour; sadly it badly failed. Had it passed, it still would have been very difficult for a single person and especially a couple or a family to survive on only $600 a week (before taxes). Only three states and Washington, DC have a minimum wage of $15.00 or more. Twenty-seven states have minimum wage laws from $14.20 an hour to $8.75. Wyoming, the most libertarian state in the country, does not have a minimum wage law at all, so its workers must be paid the federal minimum. Libertarianism may be briefly defined as “Every Person for Himself or Herself,” because libertarians support the concept of the smallest government possible short of complete chaos.
The poet John Oxenham wrote a poem called The Ways, which is apropos for this sermon.
To every man there openeth
A Way, and Ways, and a Way.
And the High Soul climbs the High Way,
And the Low Soul gropes the Low,
And in between on the misty flats,
The rest go to and fro.
One of our political parties almost always campaigns on the promise of lower taxes. Congress might make shifts in who-gets-what when they adopt federal budgets, but as long as millions of Americans do not have sufficient income to lift them above the poverty level, we must have higher taxes, particularly from those citizens who have the highest incomes. No one who lives in a welfare state, such as most European nations, Japan, Singapore, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, lives below the poverty line, unless they are illegal or undesired immigrants. No one in America should live below it, either. It is argued by many Americans that people who live in poverty don’t deserve to live at a higher level. In truth, no one who lives in a rich nation deserves to live in poverty. Taxes are a necessity, and in America higher taxes are also necessary to lift our poor out of their poverty. Equity demands it.
The thirteenth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans is very controversial. It begins, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” The King James expresses it more boldly: “The powers that be are ordained of God.” It sounds as though Paul would approve of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un, simply because they are the leaders of their three countries.
Paul was in a tight spot when he wrote this part of his letter. The Roman empire and its emperor were very powerful. Paul believed it was a necessity for the small number of Christians in the brand-new Church of Jesus Christ to keep on the good side of the Roman government, so that it would protect them. He thought they could not survive if they were to become persecuted by the government. That is why he wrote what he wrote. As long as Paul lived, Rome did not persecute Christians, although certainly not because of what he wrote in Romans 13.
It is definitely arguable that every person in every government position in every nation of the world is in that position because God ordains it. To assume that Paul intended that to be a blanket statement is surely incorrect. Thus when Paul wrote that those who “resist the authorities resist what God has appointed,” he was referring to a particular time and place, and was not suggesting a precept for all times in all places. A minimal but essential responsibility of every government is to establish and to keep order, and taxes must be secured by governments in order to keep order. Therefore Paul says, “For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due” (Romans 13:6-7). As an aside, it should be noted that the Congressional governing authorities are not showing much respect or honor to one another in yet another gunfight at the OK corral over the budget brouhaha and the Hunter (and Joe?) Biden inquiry. The treatment of Merrick Garland on Wednesday was deplorable.
The title of this sermon is The Importance and the Necessity of HIGHER Taxes. Taxes are always important, but we need higher taxes now. Too many government services, especially humanitarian services, have been cut. Furthermore, not to fund the 24 billion dollars for the war in Ukraine is unthinkable, although some are not only thinking it, but demanding it.
The most powerful nation in the world, including monetary and military power, must live up its responsibilities to its own and to the world’s citizens. To whom much is given by God, much will be expected by God. Therefore, three cheers for the IRS! On the other hand, withheld cheers (for the present), for Congress.