Aha! Moment Monday
Where are you being taxed?
Is it on your income? Or perhaps you’re handing over property taxes to your city or region? What about that pedicure, desk or birthday gift you bought? Was tax added to that purchase? Or maybe the tax is buried; not added on transparently at the point of sale but charged in the manufacturing or importing process.
In Canada if you buy raw chicken or big bottles of juice there is no tax – they’re considered groceries – but if you buy prepared chicken and individual servings of juice they are taxed. And one of my favourite wines from California is considered premium here at $17.50 a bottle but I can purchase the same bottle at the source for $5.00. Yes – tax.
Now there is a reason for collecting pools of tax: to deliver services, education, garbage collection, healthcare, policing, road maintenance, governance and so much more. And while we’re not always intimately aware of how our tax dollars are being spent – or invested – the reports are public property.
But what about the stuff that taxes you; not the tax, itself but the toll you pay from that which takes a chunk from you? Like a draining relationship, a dead end job, an inability to connect with people who are important to you, inadequate finances, a broken body – or worse, a broken spirit – or old paradigms that act as barriers to happiness?
Aha! ~ “To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury.” ~ Benjamin Tucker (Of course this goes for women and children, too.)
Now we know that Mr. Tucker was referring to income tax but wouldn’t you agree that we pay handsomely in terms of freedom of growth and expression when we allow that which doesn’t serve us to consume our energy?
It’s extremely taxing – draining, in fact.
Gives a whole new meaning to “pay attention”.
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