Today is “Tax Day.” Why was it not April 15 as usual? April 15 fell on a Sunday this year, which would push Tax Day to Monday, April 16.
However, that date is when Washington, DC, observes Emancipation Day.
The holiday honors the 1862 passage of the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, which ended slavery in the nation’s capital by paying slaveowners to pledge loyalty to the Union and free their slaves.
Thus, Tax Day was pushed to today. But “Tax Freedom Day” is Thursday.
You will have worked until April 19 to earn enough money to pay your total tax bill. In other words, everything you earn until Thursday belongs to the government. What you earn beginning on Friday, you can keep.
Americans will pay $3.19 trillion in federal taxes and $1.80 trillion in state and local taxes this year. The total of $5.19 trillion is more than we spend on food, clothing, and housing–combined.
“Seek his presence continually!”
It’s natural for us to divide our financial loyalties between what we owe in taxes and what we can keep for ourselves. Unfortunately, such bifurcation is also common in our spiritual lives.
In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis observes:
“The ordinary idea which we all have before we become Christians is this. We take as starting point our ordinary self with its various desires and interests. We then admit that something else–call it ‘morality’ or ‘decent behavior,’ or ‘the good of society’–has claims on this self: claims which interfere with its own desires.
“What we mean by ‘being good’ is giving in to those desires. Some of the things the ordinary self wanted to do turn out to be what we call ‘wrong’: well, we must give them up. Other things, which the self did not want to do, turn out to be what we call ‘right’: well, we shall have to do them.
“But we are hoping all the time that when all the demands have been met, the poor natural self will still have some chance, and some time, to…
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