10. Taxation (Remastered)

Taxation

R.J. Rushdoony

Our Scripture is Exodus 30:11-16 and our subject, ‘Taxation.’

Exodus 30:11-16

“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the Lord, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thounumberest them. This they shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel is twenty gerahs:) an half shekel shall be the offering of the Lord. Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give an offering unto the Lord. The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when they give an offering unto the Lord, to make an atonement for your souls. And thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shalt appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; that it may be a memorial unto the children of Israel before the Lord, to make an atonement for your souls.”

Our subject today is taxation. If you look up the subject in commentaries and Bible dictionaries, you will find that there is nothing written on taxation. This reflects two facts; one, a general disinterest in the subject, and second, a failure to understand Israel’s civil order.

We saw some months ago, almost a year ago, that we cannot understand Israel’s civil order unless we realize that the Holy of Holies was the center of the civil government of Israel, it was the throne room of God. God was the king of Israel and ruled from His throne on the Holy of Holies on the Ark, to Him were the taxes brought. From this throne, the government of the nation was governed by His Law-Word. The Tabernacle was indeed a religious center, but it was not an ecclesiastical center. That is, it was not the church but the religious center of nation. And from a Biblical perspective, all aspects of life are religious, so that civil government is religious; education is religious, science must be religious, every aspect of life must be religious under God. 

The taxes in Israel were required by God the King in His Law-Word, and they were of two kinds. First the poll or ‘head tax.’ This is listed in the Scripture which we read. Now, this passage is generally misunderstood because it speaks of ‘atonement’ and a ‘ransom for his soul.’ The word literally has reference to covering or protection. God is saying that there cannot be any protection for the people of Israel apart from this tax, and its purpose is:

“…that there be no plague among them, when thou numbers them.”

The word that is here translated ‘plague’ can also mean injury, ‘that you be defended…’ in other words, ‘against ‘injury’’ of any kind, literally ‘a pushing,’ that is, from an enemy. By means of this tax, in other words, God’s people gained a covering, a protecting care from God.

The census, which is required as a part of this Scripture, was a military act; it was a census to determine all those of military age. The amount of the tax was specified as the same for all, twenty years old and older, men only. The amount, a shekel, which was a weight of silver. Later on we find that this tax, called the ‘Temple tax’ in New Testament times and immediately prior to it. This should not mislead us into thinking that it was a church tax. It was a ‘Temple tax’ because the Sanhedrin, the Senate of the Jewish nation, ruled from the Temple area. 

This tax was a head tax, the same amount for rich and poor as we have seen, thus, it had to be small, lest it oppress the poor.  A discriminatory taxation was, thus, strictly forbidden. This tax was collected by the civil authority, and the Levites were not taxed. The other tax was the tithe, which was not paid to a central authority, but was, “holy unto the Lord,” according to Leviticus 27:32 and other Scriptures. It went to the priests and the Levites as they met the necessary ecclesiastical social functions of society. Sometimes the Levites served civil office, that is, they became officers of the state. But when they so served, they served with pay from the tithe. They also were the educators of society. The tithe also took care of welfare and a variety of other social needs.

Now, both these forms of taxation, the head tax and the tithe, were mandatory, they were required of all without variation, but there was a marked difference between them. The head tax went directly to the central authorities; we would say it would go to the state, the tithe was paid to local and other agencies at the will of the people. That is, it was required. 

For example, in Early America and into Constitutional America, the tithe was very often required by the State. George Washington was very much against it when Virginia dropped the compulsory tithe. The State could not requireyou to pay it to a particular agency, but the State could require that you pay it, and it went then to designated agencies. 

Now, the head tax supported the state in its military power and its courts in the ministry of justice. Education, welfare, the church, every godly social function was provided for by the tithe; the poor tithe and the regular tithe. If you had not grasped the significance of this, let us consider for a moment what it means. It means that in terms of Biblical Law, the state must be very small. It has only the taxing power of a poll tax, or a head tax of every male over twenty, a tax that cannot differ from person to person. Thus, if a tax were to be levied in the United States in terms of this law and none other, there could only be a head tax then imposed by the Counties and the States and the Federal government, which every citizen, male citizen, twenty years old and older paid. It therefore could not be large enough to make it impossible for the poorest to pay. The functions of civil government would then be strictly limited. The courts and the military power, this would be the extent. 

On the other hand, the people then would maintain by this tithe all the necessary social functions; education and welfare and every other function including the religious function. There would thus be no bureaucracy. A bureaucracy cannot develop where a state has a limited head tax. Bureaucracies everywhere are the same; as long they have funds to expand with they will expand; they grow automatically. And it was not because in Early America both in the Colonial and the Early Constitutional period people were any different who served government, it was because there was no opportunity in terms of the taxation of the day for the state to expand indefinitely. 

Under our present form of taxation, the state expands indefinitely, and there is no possibility of contracting it; it has a total taxing power. The income tax today has no limitations on it. The Sixteenth Amendment places no limit on the income tax. It is the one law on the books which has no qualifying clause. This is why, when you are allowed $600 for your personal exemption or anything else, it is called an ‘exemption,’ it is something the government grants you out of its favor and mercy. It has, by virtue of the Sixth Amendment, total claim on every penny you earn. The tithe is the Biblical income tax which God specifies to be the tithe and no more. The tithe, which is paid annually, the poor tithe is paid every other year, is the limit. Whereby God says; “This and no more I require. This is mandatory, anything above and beyond this is a gift to me, that is a free will offering. But below that I regard it as a tithe.” 

Thus, the head tax supported the civil order, the tithe supported the social order. We cannot understand what has happened in our modern world until we realize how this Christian method of taxation, this Biblical method, which was once basic to much of the Western world, has been set aside, and the state now has become the overall institution which claims jurisdiction over every area of life and the right to maintain the social function. 

There is no land or property tax in Biblical Law, the menace in such a form of taxation is that it places every realm under the state, and makes every aspect of life a part of the life of the state. In other words, the state says, “We are overlord of every domain under the sun. We have a right to reach into every domain and tax it, therefore we have a right to maintain every area. Every area, whether it is medicine, or science, or arts, for fashion, [By the way, did you know that there are Federal subsidies for fashion designing? Perhaps this is why we getting the styles we do!] for education, for all things.” There are now Federal grants, because the Federal government is the overlord for every domain. But the Scripture says, and it is one of the most often-cited verses in Scripture, we find it first in Exodus, and again in Deuteronomy, and in the Psalms, and in the New Testament, everywhere.

The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof….

Psalm 24:1.

The earth is the Lord’s, He gives it to men as a stewardship, He asks in return as His tax or rent, ten percent; beyond that, no more. Beyond that, no civil order has a right to exercise a tax on the land. In 1 Samuel 8 it is cited as one of the marks of tyranny when the state steps in to tax God’s earth. A tax on the land is therefore, according to Scripture, a tax against God and against His law-order. 

Now the subject of taxation belongs to both the Sixth Commandment and the Eighth Commandment. It fits under the Eighth Commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” because taxation can be, and is in our day, theft. It belongs under the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” because it injures and destroys man and society. The function of taxation today is increasingly in violation of God’s Law. Its purpose is no longer to support government, it is now to reorder society.  

In the past few weeks, I have been reading many of the national and international agencies that deal with social planning; these are governmental and U.N. agencies. They speak very plainly of the purpose of taxation, it is to reorder society, to reorder society. And of course, this is what the property tax, the income tax, and other taxes do; they confiscate wealth and redistribute it. 

Someone has remarked, “The purpose of taxation now is to take property from those who cannot use it wisely and give it to those who have none of it.” And this, of course, is very apt. Farming, for example, is being subjected, at present, to a deliberate plan of taxation, which serves a revolutionary purpose. The small farmer is going to be taxed out of existence. This is deliberate. The belief is that there are too many farms, and they are too small, and so the small farmer must go. Although in reality the small farmer is most productive per acre. Second, by means of subsidy which favors the large farmer. The subsidy program is being used to wipe out the small producer who gets very little help from subsidies. 

The power to tax in the modern world is, as the Supreme Court said over a hundred years ago, the power to destroy. In other words, to kill. And the law plainly declares, “Thou shalt not kill.” Taxation no longer works to support law and order. The more taxes increase now, the less law and order we have because taxation now serves to further social revolution. As a result, we must speak of modern taxation as eminently successful. It is doing its job. It is destroying law and order and furthering social revolution. There can be no change in our society simply by electing new officials. They will maintain the same old revolutionary purpose of government today because, as long as government has this power of total taxation, it will use it for total revolution, for purposes of total power. The only way that we can have a rebirth of freedom is by a rebirth of Biblical faith and Biblical principles of taxation.

Let us pray.

* * *

Our Lord and our God, thy Word is truth, and in departing from thy Word, we as a people have departed from truth. Our lives today are built upon a lie that is destroying us. Make us strong, therefore, our Father, in thy Word, recall men and nations to thy Word that once again we may know liberty under thee, that once again our nation may proclaim liberty unto all the inhabitants, and that this land under thy Word may prosper and abound under thy grace and glory. Make us, O Lord, the people of thy Word. In Jesus' name. Amen. 

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Are there any questions now first of all with respect to our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] Can you support a Christian school from tithe money, Dr. Rushdoony? ⁱ

[Rushdoony] If the Christian school is a Christian school, the tithe can be used for its support; whether it’s a free enterprise project or not. I am increasingly of that opinion. In other words, the requirement is that it be Christian and then…

Yes?

[Audience member] What if it turns a profit? ⁱⁱ

[Rushdoony] There is nothing in the Bible that says it’s a sin for a godly project to make a profit.

Yes?

[Audience member] Were the poor exempted from this tax?

[Rushdoony] No, there was no exemption for the poor it was an equal tax on all, a head tax. So that whether a man was poor or rich, he paid the same amount and it was mandatory. 

[Audience member] How much did they have to pay, then? ⁱⁱⁱ

[Rushdoony] The Scripture says that, whether they were rich or poor, they paid half a shekel. 

Now in those days, silver was very commonly more valuable than gold. It wasn’t until after Solomon’s reign, or rather during his reign that silver became plentiful. So that this was not a small sum, but it was not an impossible sum. It meant that the poor, when they gave a sum that was a little bit of a sacrifice, but it was still not an impossible sum. It had to be a tax that was possible for the poor, and yet, not unjust or oppressive for them.

Yes?

[Audience member] Was the temple funded from the tithe? ^iv

[Rushdoony] David, the father of Solomon, set aside a vast sum of money from the indemnities in part collected from enemy nations, so that he warehoused both materials and gold and silver for this purpose for a number of years.

Yes?

[Audience member] How much did the shekel weigh? ^v

[Rushdoony] I believe it was equivalent to a silver dollar, however the value was far greater than it is now, because even in the last century the inflation has been so great that it is staggering. In the eighties there was a period of inflation, but nonetheless there was a period in the eighties where you could still go to Delmonico's, the best restaurant in New York, and get the best steak dinner with everything from soup and salad to dessert and your drinks for four cents. That was a time of hard money, you see. At that time a dollar was big money. In those days you went to the grocery store with a small coin and came home with a sackful. As a matter of fact we’ve lost a lot of the coins we had then because of inflation. We used to have the half penny, the penny, the two cent piece, the three cent piece, which, for a time, was a silver piece, and also the nickel, and then the five cent piece; the dime, and then the twenty cent piece before you got to the quarter. And a lot of the business was done in that small change which was big money in those days.

Yes?

[Audience member] I do believe that we need both to be working to create Christian schools and also to be campaigning against the more egregious evils in the public schools. ^vi

[Rushdoony] Yes, I would agree. First, our children should be in Christian schools. Second, we should work to prevent disintegration of the public schools as much as possible because it buys time for us and second the further they disintegrate, and they will finally disintegrate totally, the more the social anarchy. 

I was interested not too long ago to hear a candidate, one of the finest, if not the finest of the candidates for the school board here in Los Angeles, state that it was either win now, or the public schools are finished. I believe this person was absolutely right. I’m afraid they are finished. It is certainly obvious from the events of the last week that the situation is approaching one of increasing anarchy. There is a flight of children from the public schools to an appalling degree.

Yes?

[Audience member] The public schools are rapidly declining, are they not? ^vii

[Rushdoony] Yes. At the beginning of this decade, Columbia Teachers College estimated that if Christian schools grew at the rate they were at that time, by the end of this century there would be no public schools left. Now, the rate of decline of the public schools is much greater. Gus Hawkins is right; the colored children are not learning anything in the public schools and the white children are not either, the extent of illiteracy is very great.

A few years ago, and I cite some of the evidence of this man, a reporter in New York named [George N.] Allen wrote a book entitled Undercover Teacher. He became teacher in the schools of New York City and he reported on the frightful condition of the schools, how at many schools it was possible to graduate without being able to read your diploma, that it was a situation of lawlessness and anarchy in the schools, and this is increasingly true today. 

These conditions prevail in schools where there is no rioting. In many of these schools, the teacher does not dare turn her back to the children and write on the blackboard.

Yes?

[Audience member] How does the Southern poll tax relate to the Biblical poll tax? What does it mean to ‘sow in tears’? ^viii

[Rushdoony] Well, first of all, the Southern poll tax is a tax on the right to vote, not a head tax for all citizens. So it wasn’t Biblical in that sense, although it was a survival and an adaptation of an earlier Biblical principle. Second, when the Psalmist speaks of, “they that sow with tears shall reap with joy,” it has reference to the planting of rice in years of famine. 

Supposing you were a farmer in a time of famine and you had just so much rice left and it was planting time. You go out to sow that on the waters, “cast your bread upon the waters,” that is, your rice grain. It was a difficult thing to do, and you would be tearful at times when you realized, “If a freeze or a frost kills this, this is the last, we’re going to starve. We’re just going to make it in time for the harvest of what we have left.” And of course, the point there is that no matter how difficult and dire the time, we must sow, even through with tears, with the expectation of reaping, because if we do not sow, we shall not reap. So no matter how difficult the time, how hopeless it appears, then is the time for godly reconstruction, to go out and sow, even though with tears.

Yes?

[Audience member] What did the head tax finance? ^ix

[Rushdoony] The head tax took care of all the governmental protective and legal functions, it alone went to the state. The tithe, the individual paid directly to the social agencies which he favored. 

Now the basic military functions of society and the court functions, if we reduced everything to the ministry of justice, would be very modest. Because today most of your tax dollar is welfare and education. This accounts, I am told, for… I think education or is it welfare, takes about half of your tax dollar in this county, or better, sixty-four percent someone said a while back. I don’t know how valid these figures are, but most of it goes for that purpose. The policing costs are very moderate; just an iota of your tax payment. You get a lot of nonsense here with doctored statistics, but you are paying most of your tax dollar, the overwhelming percentage of it, on every level of government today for education and welfare.

Yes?

[Audience member] What about the roads? ^x

[Rushdoony] I might add here one aspect of governmental function that some people do not realize was once taken care of by private enterprises; was roads construction. There was quite a bit of hullabaloo in this country when in one State the legislators voted money for road construction. There was such a rebellion on the part of the people that they had to halt work. That was a matter for private enterprise, and private enterprise was perfectly capable of putting in roads and charging tolls for them. Why not leave it to private enterprise? And this is the way much of construction was for a long time, and there was no problem. 

And the modern conception that every kind of social function has to be on the part of the state leads to the present concept of ‘eminent domain’ whereby now the state can, for virtually any reason according to the Supreme Court, come in and confiscate your property. It can do it for purposes of road construction, but it can also do it if it decides to beautify the area, or it could simply so choose. So that there is the possibility of total confiscation of property now, and every year the courts are lowering the protections on your property.

Yes?

[Audience member] Question on acreage limitations.

[Rushdoony] I believe the acreage limitation in California that water cannot go to farms I believe of a hundred and sixty acres and over goes back to Theodore Roosevelt, one of the very sorry men we’ve had in Washington. It had over the years, I grew up here in California, regularly been in vote against the larger farmers and never fully put into effect. The net result has been that this has been used, this acreage limitation, to keep them under control, to make them give in on one point after another, to exercise in effect a kind of blackmail over the larger farmers. So that, while the small farmer is being wiped out, the large farmer is being brought into line with more and more controls. A number of the large farms were more or less blackmailed into recognizing Chavez and his union, although they had no desire to do so. 

One thing of interest with respect to the taxing powers of civil orders today is that they are digging their own grave. I have commented repeatedly on the monetary problem. It is interesting to note that right now there are increasing rumors that devaluation has been decided on and will be forthcoming in the near future. Certainly, gold has been going up, it dropped back a bit this week but it’s beginning to climb the coins have definitely gone up, they’re over $80.00 now and are going to break $100.00 if devaluation is postponed very much longer. The big wholesalers and buying rather than selling gold coins because they expect the price will go up well beyond $100.

Meanwhile, on the bond market, the most deadly and devastating repercussions have been felt. About two weeks ago, $40 million (I mentioned this a while back to you, about ten days or two weeks ago) $40 million in state construction bonds on the fifth of March were not bought, not a single bid was entered for them. Well, the same situation is happening across country and piling up here as more and more state bond issues are coming up for subscription and there are no takers. So now it looks as though a $1.5 billion in State bonds are going to pile up there with no takers. And of course this means that, one after another of the State’s projects will grind to a halt. They’re already underway, these construction projects, road projects, water projects, college building projects, and they’re going to grind to a halt for lack of funds. And this will be true in every State and it means that the whether they’re republican or democrat, they’re all dodging it, saying “Maybe this will go away if we keep quiet,” are in for certain trouble because the opposition can say, “Look, the State has gone bankrupt under you, our bonds cannot be bought.”

So this is building up to a major crisis and undoubtedly before the end of the year, emergency legislation will have to be rushed through to change the law to make possible short-term bonds with a higher rate of interest because the bond market now will not absorb these due to the expectation of coming devaluation. But the net result is that with the vast issues of bonds, with inflation, with devaluation, with paper money becoming progressively worthless, the state is destroying itself. That is, civil government everywhere. And more and more people are beginning to realize that Franz Pick was so right when he said not to long ago concerning bond that what bondholders have are certificates of guaranteed confiscation which will leave them only eyes to cry with.

I have time for possibly one more question if anyone has one?

Yes?

[Audience member] It looks like they’re trying to run down the value of bullion, don’t you think, Dr. Rushdoony?  ^xi

Yes, it’s already taking place, the attempt to run down the value of the bullion. We’ve had the concerted effort for a long time to run down the value of silver bullion, which has been partially successful. This week there was a concerted effort to run down the value of the silver bullion. In the long run it will fail, but in the short range it has worked. However, there are attempts on the part of private speculators to counteract this concerted effort to destroy the markets here by interfering. So the interference is very, very real. 

I can only remind you of what Hans Sennholz said in August of 1962. At that time he stated, and this was in conversations with Dorothy and myself, “Within two years, by ‘64, the price of silver would have in terms of the free market reached a point where it would disappear from coinage completely. But I do not expect it to happen, because the Federal government will do everything to prevent economic law from operating, and they will delay the disappearance of silver coinage, but they will not be able to prevent it.”

Well, he was so right. They can delay the workings of economic law, they cannot prevent it. They can delay the operation of God’s Law, but they cannot prevent it. And because they’ve departed from a Biblical standard of taxation and from a Biblical standard of money, which is in terms of hard money; gold and silver, just weights and just measures, which meant a just weight of silver and gold. Because we’ve departed from it we are going to be destroyed by our own action.

Well, our time is up and we are adjourned.

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