Death and Taxes
Today would be tax day if not for, well, you know. We have filed our taxes on or about April 15 for more than sixty years, since 1954. Well, most of us have anyway. In February 1913, when Congress passed the 16th Amendment allowing for an income tax, it gave American citizens less than a month to get their acts together. Subsequently, only .4% of the population filed. I feel like if we all did that together now, we could have a go at it. I mean, they can't throw us all in jail. Besides, Steve Martin has an airtight defense against tax evasion, one of my father's favorite routines, just tell them "I forgot." I'm not a lawyer but I'm not sure if that will work. Any one who tries that on June 15, this year's new tax day, and tells me about it will have this whole newsletter dedicated to them.
All this is a reminder that governments still have to function during the pandemic. South Korea is holding national elections today and turnout, according to recent polls, is expected to be higher than usual. Each voter will have his or her temperature taken at the polling stations and voters running a fever will have separate places to vote. Every piece of voting equipment will be sanitized often. It's hard to imagine our current American quarantine lasting all the way to November when we head to the polls but it's also unlikely that a widely available vaccine will be in production by then, so South Korea's success or failure today should be of great interest to us, if for no other reason than to avoid on a national level the confusion, inefficiency and public health danger that befell Wisconsin's mismanaged primary a few weeks ago (for those worried [or perhaps hoping] that the president may suspend the election in November, those decisions lie in the hands of the states, not the federal government. The fevered mollusks that deliver thoughts from his brainpan to his mouth may tell him he has the authority to do this but the Constitution does not).
Just the same, we've held national elections in times of crisis before, most notably when the country was literally at war with itself. The outcome of the 1864 election between Abraham Lincoln and General George B. McClellan, held during the final, deadly slog of the Civil War, was as important as Chancellorsville, Gettysburg or any other battle of the conflict. McClellan, who was the commanding officer of the Union forces before Lincoln fired him, was campaigning on the fact that he planned to end the war by suing for peace. And though Lincoln trounced him in November, that was not the expectation in August when Union forces were winning but at huge costs and morale in northern states was exceedingly low. By September, Atlanta had fallen and with it the dying hopes of the rebellion. Public sentiment irrevocably turned in Lincoln's favor and by November he was popular enough to win all but 3 states. In a time when there's a common refrain that the country has never been more divided than it is now, it's good to remind ourselves that we were once absolutely six months away from signing a truce with the Confederate States of America.
It is to Lincoln's credit that so much got done under his watch despite the country's crisis (and, yes, people are right to point out the ways he sidestepped the Constitution to do it), including the establishment of revenue taxes, the forerunner of our income taxes. Even his signing of Emancipation Proclamation, on April 16, 1862, has tax ramifications. Washington D.C. celebrates Emancipation Day on April 16 and though it's only a local holiday it acts like a federal one in cases in which April 15 lands on a Sunday, making taxes due on April 17, after the IRS recovers from Emancipation Day celebrations. You can use all this information as a confusion defense as to why you haven't filed.
Ever since taxes were first levied by the ancient Egyptians 5000 years ago, governments have found ways of getting more people to pay them. For most of human history, this was done through forced labor, corporal punishment or property seizure. Nowadays, when at least of few of those things are frowned upon, governments are getting creative. In parts of Pakistan, the state deploys packs of transgender tax collectors on the theory that the conservative populace is so mortified even to be seen with a transgender person they will pay their bill out of embarrassment. Sadly, it works. Tough nuts to crack are threatened with dancing, singing and general carrying on.
The ancient Roman emperor Nero, himself a cross-dresser, hated tax collectors, who he feared were keeping too much for themselves. It should be said, however, that he loved taxes, perhaps not as much as other despots but his raising of them was legendary. Ostensibly to pay for the reconstruction of Rome after the days long fire of 64AD ravaged the city, those taxes eventually made their way into grander and grander palaces for the Emperor to live. And what was Nero doing during the Roman fire? Well, he certainly wasn't fiddling, having predated the fiddle by a thousand years. Nero was a musical being (his dying words were "What an artist the world is losing in me!") but he played many instruments like the cithara, a lute-like guitar, and, as if we needed another reason to despise him beyond his persecution of Christians (who he blamed the fire on) and his murder of his mother (who did so much to help him become Emperor in the first place), he played the bagpipes, which, even 2000 years later, are the worst sounding instruments in the world. Some of you may forgive him for having invented ice cream. I cannot. "Fiddling while Rome burned," which Nero couldn't have done, as become a phrase attributed to leaders who shrink during crises. It is, as my excellent friend Chris Diebel says, the masculine version of "let them eat cake." Luckily, modern leaders rarely do this because of the prevalence of democracy. Can you imagine a voting public tolerating a leader who, say, knew about an impending crisis for, I don't know, something like two months, saw examples of other countries handling the crisis in other parts of the world and still did next to nothing until the crisis was too big to be managed? Unthinkable.
Fires could easily be added to the list of predictable things that includes death and taxes. I'm reminded that it was only a year ago today that we were all watching Notre Dame go up in flames. Seems like a different world.