The Adventures Of Debit & Credit - Chapter 4 - Why and Taxes.
If you haven't read the previous chapters of 'The Adventures of Debit & Credit - A punny accounting story', then you should check them out first!
Chapter 1 - Let us go to Finance!
Chapter 2 - Meeting Income and Expense
The story so far: Debit and Credit leave their planet of Accounting and settle down at the Planet of Finance for fun and adventure. They start working at the biggest market in the entire galaxy – The Stock Market & Co., however, things turn around when the largest data leak in the history of the galaxy occurs.
Fun fact 1 – The currency for the planet of Economics, Finance, and Accounting is called monies.
Fun fact 2 - Twitter exists in every galaxy of this world.
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Chapter - 4 - Why and Taxes
The mood after ‘The Leak’ as it was dubbed by the newspapers was bland. The newspapers were filled with blood and gore.
“Babe, could you pass me the newspaper?” Profit&loss asked Balancesheet, as he took a chair at the table, and poured some tea, and grabbed some toast for breakfast. Profit&loss had stayed over last night. Profit&loss seemed to be staying a lot over at their place and spending more time with Balancesheet, but Debit and Credit liked him, he was good company. Born and brought up on Finance, Profit&loss had a different perspective on things.
“Sure,” Balancesheet replied, passing the paper across.
The whole paper was filled with terrible headlines. Even the entertainment column was filled with movie stars who had stashed away their money. It seemed that no one rich and in their right mind wanted to pay taxes.
Today’s big story was:
“24.1 percent of the world lived on less than 3.20 monies a day and 43.6 percent on less than 5.50 monies a day, while the combined wealth of top 20 Families of Finance is 463 billion monies. All of them have been named in ‘The Leak’ and have been accused of stashing their money on offshore planets.”
“Why, why, why…. this is terrible!” Debit exclaimed, distress seeping into his tone, as he looked over the article which Profit&loass was reading, “Why would people do this? You can pretty much end world hunger with this kind of money!”
“What do you mean by why… isn’t that common knowledge?” Profit&loss asked raising his eyebrows.
“Look, taxes are paid to the government so that they maintain the infrastructure, the police, the justice system. Whatever you earn, you pay a percentage of that to the government and in return, you get better facilities. When more people pay tax, the government has money to provide better amenities for everyone. Hence, it makes logical sense to not avoid it. Besides, aren’t people afraid of the punishment for doing this? In Accounting we have strict laws, no one would dare to break it.”
Profit&loss frowned at that and replied, “Unfortunately, life isn’t fair, what is supposed to happen doesn’t and you have to pretty much deal with it. And our society is a bit different, here there are three classes - the poor class, the middle class, and the rich class. The poor don’t pay taxes as they don’t earn, the rich are supposed to pay taxes but they don’t and often the middle class is stuck paying taxes as they form the salaried class and they cannot avoid it. The rich use their businesses to hide their money. Laws for the normal salaried class are stricter than those for businessmen. Laws are made easier for businesses by justifying that if businesses don’t run, the system of wealth creation would collapse and there would be unemployment which would increase crimes and other anti-social activites. But more often than not, these rich business houses can bribe lawmakers and get laws in their favor. And that is how you have a lot of laws with loopholes that allow you to legally send your money to these offshore planets. The common public, unfortunately, doesn’t have that unfair advantage and they have to pay tax.”
“That is there,” Balancesheet spoke up, “nevertheless, people also feel that, oh…I am paying so much tax but the benefits I get aren’t commensurate with that. Roughly 10% of the population pays tax, that tax is used to care for 100% of the population, so definitely the taxpayers won’t get great facilities. Hence, there is a mentality, why pay tax, let’s avoid it.”
“But you can’t justify that,” Credit said, adding his reasoning, “this cycle would only break when more people stop hiding money and honestly pay taxes. Infrastructure and education would get better only if the government gets that tax, which would in turn benefit the weaker sections and help them get out of the bottom and rise. When the poor start earning, more taxpayers would be added and tax money would grow and then the burden of development will be equitably distributed.”
“Umm, yes…” Profit&loss sighed, running a hand through his hair, “but the mentality is let’s just think about the present, who has seen the future and also more of let me think about myself and the government doesn’t care.”
“That just sucks. At least in Accounting, everyone has access to all facilities like government healthcare, education and it also ensured everyone has work or unemployment benefits,” Credit huffed annoyingly.
“Yes, but you left, right? For what? The freedom and the reason this system is way more successful is that it is a basic human instinct to be greedy. Humans are always filled with desire for more.”
“We are humans and hence we should care for the weak also, otherwise it just makes us animals.”
“Okay…that is it guys,” Balance intervened before Profit&loss and Credit got out of hand. Also, Balancesheet knew Profit&loss didn’t like to lose an argument, so there was no way that this discussion was going to end well. Profit&loss always liked to be in profit.
“There is no point debating whose system is better because none of them are the best. Every system has its pros and cons…” Balancesheet reasoned.
The mood always goes sour when people start defending their ideologies since people, in general, were narrow-minded and defensive. Everyone just puts on a show of being open-minded.
“This is why I prefer reading news on Twitter, it is much more hilarious and fun and less of this uncomfortable tension,” Debit said humorously.
“See, look at this,” He said as he angled his screen so that everyone could see.
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