Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

I often had thought about the following quote, and hoped to find someway to prove it wrong;

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

When I first heard this I was a young man who has been working my first "real job", for a few months, and was complaining to a co-worker about the income tax with holding amount. In the US, it is referred to as FICA.

FICA = Federal Insurance Contributions Act. This was imposed by the federal government on both employees and employers to fund Social Security and Medicare—federal programs that provide benefits for retirees, the disabled, and children of deceased workers. Social Security benefits include old-age, survivors, and disability insurance; Medicare provides hospital insurance benefits.

In the other direction it has been observed that everything that lives, does indeed die at some point! So, I guess when Benjamin Franklin said this, he had forward thinking in mind. Since there was no payroll, or income tax during his time. Only the tax placed upon certain items, like Tea for example.

The one thing I do find "funny" is we have in the US yet another tax, called the estate tax. When you die, if you do not name a direct family member to inherit your money, goods, and property. It then becomes the right of the Federal government to place a tax of 50% upon it. Yes, 50%, so it is more true than ever, that death and taxes can never be avoided.