The Elly Report: Heritage & Faith in Action

Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and …?

by William J. Gillmeister, Agricultural Economist

April 15th is upon us; taxes are due. Most of us will march off to the Post Office sometime today, (some of us at midnight tonight) to give Uncle Sam and the State House their due. Conversations about taxes will inevitably invoke the classic "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's…." The person making the statement uses it to say that you should pay whatever taxes Caesar says you should pay. This is what good law abiding people do, right? Wrong. But first, where does this idea of giving Caesar his due come from?

The statement itself comes from that dusty book with the family genealogy in it or the book sitting on a forgotten bookshelf somewhere. Many learned it as children in CCD or Sunday School. Yes, that's right, it comes from the Bible, just like the Golden Rule. However, I think using this statement to argue that we should pay whatever taxes Caesar tells us to pay is wrong, and I'm not alone.

Most of us, particularly Bay Staters, know well from history class that the colonists in Boston didn't think that way. They threw tea into the harbor in revolt over giving Caesar his due. They bulged with rebellion at the Stamp Act. The colonists were concerned with not only Caesar's due but also with whom Caesar was. The Parliament thought it was, and the Colonists thought otherwise. However, the issue of heavy taxes was still an issue.

What the Colonists knew, which we seem to have forgotten, is that there are other parts of that Book with the genealogy that says otherwise. That Book has many great stories and one of which is Nehemiah. Nehemiah is the patron saint of all who believe that taxes are burdensome. This guy is an Old Testament guy back at the time after Babylon and Assyria-the modern day Iraq and Syria geographically speaking-had plundered Israel. He was living in Babylon and asked to return to his homeland of Israel. When he did, he found that the Princes in Israel, or governors, themselves Jewish, had taxed the Jewish people to the point where they had to sell their sons and daughters into slavery to pay the taxes. The Book says he was absolutely and flaming furious with the Princes, and I quote, "You are exacting usury from your own countrymen!" (Nehemiah 5:7) He literally humiliated them into revising the tax structure, and they did.

While many of us are not selling our children into slavery, and I doubt the colonists were either, the tax burden is still heavy. Furthermore, the Legislature promised back in 1989 that it would reduce the "temporary" tax of 5.9% back to 5.0% as soon as fiscal difficulties of the time had abated. They failed to do so. After 10 years, we had somewhat of a measly revolt called an initiative petition to lower the tax rate over three years. That initiative ballot question won with a resounding victory.

That was in 2000. Where has that gotten us? Five years later and we still have a tax rate of 5.3%! Further, the House just released its budget on Wednesdy, and they opine that they cannot reduce the tax rate this year. By law they should have done it two years ago, which means that our own legislature is violating the law!

The colonists knew that in fact they did have to pay Caesar, for they paid other taxes too. They also knew that the Parliament had violated the principle of government by consent and further that Parliament was laying an undue tax burden on the colonists. So, the next time you hear someone claim, "Give unto Caesar," remind them of the story of the colonists and Nehemiah.

By the way, the rest of the verse says, "…and give to God what is God's."