1. Solomon’s Yoke

CHAPTER I

Solomon’s Yoke

IT IS TOLD—1 Kings, Chapter 12—that the people of Israel petitioned their new ling, Rehoboam, son of Solomon, to relieve them of the “yoke” his father had suffered them to bear. The “yoke,” we learn from the story, was the cost of maintaining the political establishment; it was an income tax.

The designation of a levy on one’s production as a “yoke” is interesting; it shows how keen is the mind unencumbered with erudition. The yoke symbolizes the beast of burden, who, of course, has no right of property. When the human is similarly deprived of what he has produced—which is the essence of income taxation—he is indeed degraded to the status of an ox. The Israelite, who maintained that he was made in the image of God, sensed the indignity; he wanted none of the “yoke.”

The story goes on to say that Rehoboam promised to take his subjects’ plea under advisement. Apparently, he talked the matter over with his ministers. What they said to him is unrecorded, but we can infer from his ultimate decision that they strongly advised him against any reduction of the income tax; after all, ministers have to be supported in the style to which bureaucrats always like to be accustomed. So, after shilly-shallying for three days, Rehoboam came to the point and said: “Whereas my father did lade you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke: my father did chastise you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.”

Whatever chastisement with scorpions may be, it is certainly not pleasant to the recipient. And that is something you might remember when an agent of the Internal Revenue Department calls you on the carpet for not including in your income-tax return the winnings you made at poker or the gratuities you received as a waiter or a beautician. Things could be much worse with us than they are; we could be chastised with scorpions.

We learn from this biblical story that income taxation is a very old custom. Antiquarians find mention of the practice in the annals of Egypt, as far back as 1580 B.C. In those days, it appears, the Grand Vizier did not levy on the incomes of his subjects but on the incomes of public officials; since the latter had nothing of their own to tax—public officials are not producers—their taxable funds consisted of what they had mulcted from the producing public. It was tax farming. There is something to be said in favor of that system. Since the tax collector gets his “cut” first, before turning over the balance to the central government, he can never be accused of accepting bribes—a charge that is sometimes levied against agents of our Internal Revenue Bureau.

Even evasion of the income tax, by way of false income-tax returns, is not a modern invention Gibbon makes mention of the use of racks and scourges in ancient Rome, up to the fourth century of the Christian era, to get the truth out of suspected evaders. We have not, at any rate, come to that, although we do on occasions cast a tax dodger into durance vile.

For something really different and quite startling in the income-tax business, we must again refer to the biblical story. Some of the Israelites were so resentful about the “yoke” that when Rehoboam’s chief tax collector, one called Hadoram, made his round among them, they unceremoniously met him with such a hail of stones “that he died.” This was rather hard on Hadoram and his family, and is not to be recommended for agents of the Internal Revenue Bureau. In the latter part of this book— which concerns itself with the immorality of the income tax—a more orderly and effective way of getting rid of the “yoke” that Americans have been suffered to wear since 1913 will be suggested. Provided, of course, they want to get rid of it; provided they have the sense of self-respect and human dignity that characterized those stone-throwing Israelites.