Don't Mess With Taxes

Talk about holding a grudge.

Throughout the New Testament of the Bible, it’s frequently mentioned that one of the main groups Jesus returns to Earth to combat are tax collectors. Along with prostitutes, Pharisees and Atlanta Braves fans, the tax collectors are often called out by the Gospel writers as the living embodiment of greed, evil, and non-negotiable deduction policy. Can’t say I blame them, honestly. Who likes paying taxes?

It has long been theorized that God used the parables and unfavorable caricatures of tax collector because of what they did to cheat honest, hard-working people. It wasn’t that God was anti-tax; look, when His Son was walking from town to town, I’m sure He was glad that there was public Kingdom funding that created an inter-village highway system. Without it, it’s just a dozen or so be-sandaled guys wandering aimlessly through the Desert.

(The GPS of the time, the North Star, was a little hard to see during the day.)

Yes, in Jesus’ teaching, the tax collector was often the villain because of his deceitful ways. But there are cracks in this theory. After all, the Son of God accepted Matthew, a tax collector, into his posse. If God hated the tax collector so much, this would have never happened. It’s like inviting a bunch of your friends to go to a very genre-specific outdoor concert, and making sure you convince your one country-music hating friend to come along for the hell of it. In addition, we know that Jesus didn’t hate the tax collector because of His agreeing to eat dinner in the house of Zacchaeus, the Michael Jordan of all Biblical tax collectors. Surely, if it was tax collectors he hated, there’s no way Jesus stiffs his followers for a fine meal with Public Enemy Number One.

(That is, unless Mrs. Zacchaeus makes a mean pot roast.)

What does this all mean? It’s simple, really. God doesn’t hate the Taxman.

He just hates Taxes.

I have no idea what the Big Guy’s Master Plan for the funding of Civil Service and Community Spending, but taxes are NOT the answer. Aside from making sure His selected biographers wrote scathing depictions of those who collected 38% of your weekly wage for a living, it wasn’t personal. It’s the taxes that He’s disagreed with all these years. How do we know this?

On Monday, the Internal Revenue Service declared that all Americans affected by the recent Nor’easter storm that ran up the East Coast would be granted a two-day extension to pay their taxes on time. Because many people were stranded at airports – far, far away from their shoeboxes of receipts – the IRS decided to come to the rescue. They’ve granted 48 additional hours of calculations and withholdings for the down-on-their-luck Americans who still want to pay lots and lots of money to fund that stupid federal appropriation for everyone to wear name tags. That’s right, a storm almost prevented you from having to pay taxes. Weather! Natural Disaster occurrences!

God was trying to give you a free pass.

Why? Because He hates Taxes. It’s not like this is the first time the Almighty has used his meteorological know-how to make his point. What’s that? Wickedness of humankind got the Ruler of Creation down? Whatever. I’ll just unleash this 40 DAY FLOOD. That’ll do the trick.

Thanks for the rowboat, IRS. We are forever indebted to you for your bravery to allow me to do something I don’t want to do, and defy God in the process. In the process, you’ve probably incurred God’s wrath. Just wait until he steals the Sun from you during audits. Where are your precious solar-powered calculators now???

Note: If this were me, I would have just postponed Tax Day and scheduled a day-night doubleheader next April.