Paying Taxes is Pro-People

It's also a privilege that pays you back a hundredfold

This is a free post, which I normally don’t do on something like this. Play nicely, please. And consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription. It’s perilous times for federal employee households right now. More on that at the end.

I was raised to believe that tax evasion wasn’t a shame, it was the goal.

I’m not sure this was always the case, but when I reached adolescence and began to understand what taxes were and how they worked, we were taught (by one of my parents) that taxes (social security numbers, drivers licenses, requiring car insurance, and much more) were illegal and those who paid them were sheep.

None of my seven siblings or I had social security numbers, so paying taxes wasn’t an option until my early twenties. We could only get jobs that paid cash and we were told to pocket it all—except our 10% tithe. I know people to this day who still practice this belief, and have lengthy defenses for why it is justified and good.

Something about this never sat right with me. I remember being a small child watching Mr. Rogers Neighborhood on PBS, and hearing the tagline that it was “Made possible by viewers like you.” Something in me bloomed whenever I heard that (Still! Whenever I hear it!). The thought that I could somehow be a part of making that possible, it stunned me. This was around the time my parents and siblings began calling me a “bleeding heart liberal,” which in our circles was as bad as being a devil worshiper or a precursor to a life of wanton shame and whoring. I should have known from then on that I was destined to pay taxes.

I didn’t know then, though, that I was destined to a life of wanting to pay taxes.

I moved out of my family’s home the year after y2k didn’t materialize into my father’s dream of an apocalypse. It was also the year after my brother’s sudden death, my parent’s final separation, my youngest brother’s very premature birth, and my first few months of having my own social security number. For the first time, at age 21, I was able to get a job with a real paycheck, a paycheck that held back social security and taxes. I have said in the past that I have never once hesitated to give my number to those who ask for it and that was true from day one. It was also true from day one that I felt a sense of collective participation in paying taxes, though I don’t know that I could have expressed that then. All I knew is that I felt legal, and a part of something bigger than myself.

After years of getting paid under the table—if at all, being encouraged to drive without a license and not having car insurance, I felt free. I no longer felt shame about this hidden part of myself and my life. I was living in permission. Some might argue that I didn’t need the government’s permission, but I’d have some arguments back for them.

It was around my mid-twenties when I began to realize that my taxes weren’t just going to social security for old people, they were going to pay for fire-stations and the police, the blessing of being able to call 911 and get a response. My taxes were helping to pay for the WIC and food pantry items that almost all the families in my quiverfull church used freely despite voting Republican. My taxes were paying for National Parks and National galleries, public television and radio. They were also paying for a war being fought in the years post 9/11 that I found I had an opinion about and that paying my taxes meant I had not only a voice, but a responsibility—an obligation—to use it. My taxes paid for postal service and medical research and healthcare for young people too. Sales taxes weren’t just extras tapped onto my grocery bills, they were helping to pay for the many hands who helped prepare, supply, and transport the food that I fed myself with, but also their education, roads, healthcare, and more.

Now I was beginning to realize that I wasn’t just paying taxes into the void. I wasn’t just a sheep following blindly. I was actually a participating member of society who personally benefited from public spaces and gardens, public art and parks, public roads and protection. There was not one part of my life—and the lives of those around me—that wasn’t benefited from paying taxes.

An argument can be made that people should be able to make their own choice about what they support—almost everyone in my family and those in the circles I was raised in would make that argument. But I am making my own choice. I am saying with a percentage of what I earn that I trust people who have spent their whole lives and careers in specific areas of research, work, and passion. I trust them to know how to best spend my percentage in the funding of art and science, healthcare and space, land preservation and policing. Will they do it perfectly or will they do it just as I would do it if the money were in my pocket? Honestly, I don’t care. I never think of that money as mine.¹ I think of it as belonging to the public for the public. I don’t feel stolen from because I have already decided that it doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to us.

And we are worth it.

We are worth having access to art across centuries, the best healthcare possible, cutting-edge scientific research, attentive firefighters and police officers, postal service that works efficiently, beautiful places in nature that are well-cared for, Mr. Rogers for the kids and Masterpiece Theater for the adults. It is good for our bodies and our brains and our hearts to have access to these things that some in history could have only dreamed of. Taxes make those things possible.

California Life, Coit Tower, San Francisco California Life (or, City Life), a mural on Coit Tower, 1933–34; in San Francisco, created during the Public Works of Art Project, during the New Deal.

You know what else taxes pay for?

• Healthcare for those who can’t afford it and grants that pay for their rehabilitation.

• Food and other essential items for struggling mothers or fathers to keep their babies alive and fed.

• Better foster care systems where kids don’t fall through the cracks.

• Longer parental leave for new parents learning to care for and bond with their infants.

• Meals for kids at low income schools, sometimes the only meals those kids will get in a day.

Paying taxes is one of the most pro-life things we can do, a small thing that affects hundreds of thousands more lives than an act of volunteering or a financial gift to your charity of choice.²

Some Christians push back against this, saying it’s the Church’s job to do this or if abstinence was practiced or two parent homes were intact, these problems wouldn’t exist. I can tell you as someone raised in an environment like this, that these high-horse ideals sound nice and ultimately make people feel justified in their opinions, but those same people are stopping by the food pantry for staples on their way home, using public assistance when their one-income home can’t afford an emergency room bill, using public programs for their disabled kids, and more. It’s hypocrisy and I lived it until I couldn’t live in it anymore.

This is a more personal post than it might seem.

My husband works for the federal government. He works hard, tirelessly, faithfully, and for much less money than he could make in the public sector.

For as long as I’ve known him, he has loved working in the government or non-profit sector because he wants his work to have meaning in the real world. He is an employee who does excellent work behind the scenes for very little thanks or visibility.

The work he does directly affects you in your every day life. Something you take for granted as simply being a reality of your life, something you handle every single day of your life, and depend on for your life to work smoothly—he has worked hard to give you that life. Do you see the work he’s doing? Do you even know that kind of work has to be done in order for your life to run the way it does? No. And that’s the point. You pay taxes and a percentage of what you pay goes to a federal agency who decides how it will be spent, on what projects and in what order, and then doles it out to their employees at very low rates for very little thanks. Sometimes those tasks are as menial as cleaning up poopy toilets in National Parks so you have a clean place to plant your bum when the need arises.

These federal employees see their work in much the same way I see my taxes: a public good. And right now they are either losing their jobs or being threatened of it daily.

It is a terrifying time to be working for the government right now.

If you know a federal employee, reach out to them, tell them you see them, tell them you’re grateful for the work they’re doing, and even though you might not understand the work the do exactly, you’re grateful to be a participant in the work with them by paying your taxes.

Next, make this call today to stop the purge of federal workers with no cause. There’s a script there for what to say, and all you have to do is enter your location and it will bring up who to call. Leave a voicemail. Your taxes matter but your voice matters more.

PS. Every time I write about something of a political nature, someone emails me with UNSUBSCRIBE in all caps and bolded (because that’s meaner?). Most of the time they also say, “I liked you better when you didn’t write about politics,” or “Keep it to Jesus stuff and keep politics out of it.” Well, guess what? I’m 44 and I’ve been a bleeding heart liberal since I was six years old, and I honestly don’t care if you like me or not. I like me and Mr. Rogers taught me that.

I lean left but I love a lot of Republicans, and am actually a big believer in the necessity of diversity in our world and politics. If you’re curious about why I’m that way or want to become more supportive of diversity in our communities, now would be a great time to pick up my book, The Understory:

1. Even when I was living below poverty level (for all of my 20s and part of my 30s). No matter how much or how little money I’ve made, I’ve tried to see taxes as a public good.

2. There is a flip side, though, one I eluded to above. Our taxes also pay for a bloated military, help fund surgeries I find objectionable, contribute to mass incarceration and the prison complexes that keep prisoners in their systems instead of truly rehabilitating them, and more decidedly not pro-life things. I object to these things not by withholding my taxes, but by using my voice and my vote to object to them.