Death and Taxes

TAXES

Give unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar. I recently heard that taxes in the USA were started as a way of collecting money for the war effort. I should have known that.
 
There’s a consensus that taxes are required in order for our governments to provide us with common services – like the police force, the army, and some social stuff like education and healthcare.
 
The purpose then would be to make sure that nobody is taken advantage of.
 
So, why do we really hate paying taxes? The easy answer is that none of the money that we pay in taxes goes to provide the stuff that the government says they will provide. In essence, we don’t trust the collector of the taxes to honor the promises they made in how they are going to use it.
 
I don’t believe that the government will do anything that they say they’ll do. And since I don’t understand some of the more complex details around the collection and use of various taxes, this is a scam.
 
A huge scam.
 
Taxes and tax laws make up a huge part of life. People pay them without really understanding why they’re there, and I’m one of them. There are levy’s, value-added components, capital gains, property, income, goods and services, adjustments, incremental supplements and I could start creating names that nobody understands for anything that I need to collect.
 
Government then creates institutions to collect, collate, filter and sieve (I’m joking, not), and then penalize individuals on being successful.
 
I can see why some people don’t declare or announce their various successes in business.
 

DEATH

It’s quite unfair to compare death to taxes but the comparison doesn’t stop at the thought that both are inescapable, unavoidable conditions of being a citizen who works and earns money.
 
It’s also the excruciating fear of inevitability that accompanies the thought that one day, I too will die. The fear grows with each passing year, getting stronger and stronger as the body gets weaker and weaker, until, like taxes, death comes along and penalizes you for being alive.
 
And you’d think that with you being dead taxes would end, oh no. When you die, an accounting of your life is done and a final tax bill is inherited by those you leave behind, or by the government.
 
Nobody benefits; nobody wins.
 

DEATH AND TAXES

There’s incredibly no way to survive any of the two, unless, of course, you head over to and live in the Cayman Islands where you can live in the tax-free haven. You’ll still have to die though eventually, but when you do, you may have saved something of your existence on the planet so that those you leave behind can think suitably of you and not with ire and disappointment.
 
Why does the Cayman Islands not tax its citizens and why doesn’t the rest of the world follow? What do they know that the rest of the governments of the world are still to learn? And can we ultimately throw off the shackles of providing the government with a piece of our hard-earned money and still get the services that they are supposed to provide.
 
Has it ever occurred to you as curious how those who work in the tax departments are flush with cash? Food for thought.
 
In any case, following up on the idea of a tax-free (and longer life) heaven, I propose that the government start behaving in a more investing and mentoring frame of mind. I also propose that, just like citizens are penalized, and in many cases for simply missing a payment deadline, that the government is also graded, rated and scored on its use of the funds we provide. The scorecard can then be used to kick out those in government driving the agendas and replace them with more competent bodies.
 
This is all possible, we just need the will to make it happen.
 
And if the succession group fails, then they also get kicked out and new people assume the mantle of managing the people’s money. It is the people’s money after all.
 

DEATH... AGAIN

Finally, I hope, it seems inconceivable that citizens should pay taxes for an entire lifetime, even when they are close to death. I’m sure I’m not the only one that has thought of this, but after a lifetime (say 40 years of paying taxes), the government should remove the IV needle from those particular citizens and allow them to graciously wander in the country that their money has helped to build and not bother them again.
 
After all, they’ll still be buying food, paying for transportation, buying gifts and going on trips. In other words, they’ll continue to spend money without the added burden of continual tax payments. Tax is a burden; it’s in the very word itself. If you tell someone, you are very taxing to listen to, it’s not really a complement.
 
And in any case, we expect that at that level of contribution to the governments initiatives, if someone has lived and worked and paid taxes for a very, very long time, perhaps the reward for the good citizenship is to leave them alone in peace. As I get closer to retirement (well I’m actually retired) it would be nice to be left alone to teach, to write and not fear that I could be thrown into prison when my mind is not able to wrap around the new taxes that are sure to prop up in this technologically sophisticated world we live in.
 
I hope that as I slowly lose the ability to run and chase after money, then my contribution to the country I’m soon to depart from is in the form of the wisdom of age. Granted, not everyone is wise, but that’s a minor point since there aren’t too many old people.
 
Death and taxes are related. It’s possible that taxes cause death, but I won’t go there now. I’ll just leave you with that thought.