The envelope comes every year, and my wife leaves it on the kitchen counter for me to open. She knows I like to. Some men dread that bill. I have come to think of it as a report card, and I have always done well on report cards.
Texas does not take a dime of my wages. There is no state income tax here, and I thank the Lord for it every spring when my cousins in other states are bent over their forms. What Texas does instead is lean on the things you can see: your house, your land, the groceries in your cart, the tires on your truck. I like that. A tax you can see is an honest tax. You know what you are paying for because you are standing on it.
I suppose a tax on what you can see falls hardest on the fellow whose wealth you can see, the one with a modest house and a full cart, and lightest on the fellow whose money sits in places a tax man cannot walk up to and knock on. I have thought about that, and I do not see the problem. A man whose wealth lives in an account somewhere is not using the roads the way I am. He is not sending his children down to the school on the corner, or if he is, he is not doing it for long. Why should he carry the load for a town he mostly flies over?
My father used to say a man should carry his own feed sack. He never said anything about carrying the neighbor’s, but I have found that a strong back is a strong back, and if mine can hold a little more, it ought to. The widow down the road pays on a house she bought when the street was still gravel. Her bill goes up whether her pension does or not. She told me last fall she might have to sell. I told her she ought to feel some pride in that. Not many people get to say their home became worth more than they could keep.
There is a kind of person who sees a rising bill and goes looking for whose bill did not rise. I find that ugly. It is envy with a calculator. The men at the very top got there by being careful about what they pay, and I do not believe in punishing a man for being careful.
This fall I will vote for the Republican for Senate, because I want this arrangement kept just as it is. The other side, as I understand it, wants the men at the very top to carry more of the load, and I would hate to see my own share get any lighter.
So when the envelope comes, I open it at the table, I read it twice, and I write the check. I think about the school and the fire truck and the road out front, and I think about how much of it is mine to hold up.
More of it every year, it seems. I don’t mind. Somebody has to.
D. M.