Death & Taxes — Are Certain

I owe much of my literary and reading talents to my school education, for the curriculum covered many great works of historical poets, writers and literary icons of the Western world. Even the history syllabi were of Roman and Greek origins. The influence of my school education and reading habits had been chronicled in my blog ‘The Spur of imagination’, posted in the month of December 2020. In this context, I recollect the famous poem Ozymandias by PB Shelley. It reads out in the first stanza how a traveller finds two trunkless legs in a desert, with the statue’s frowning head fallen nearby, submerged in the sand, and the following script on the pedestal of the statue — 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ The poet continues his sonnet, “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare. The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

PB Shelley recalls having met a traveller from a far away ancient land, who tells him a story about the ruins of a statue lying in the desert in his country. The traveller describes to the poet that there lies a massive statue of two legs without a body and its massive broken and fragmented stone head that lies half sunken in the sand. The traveller narrates to the poet ‘the frown’ and ‘sneer of cold command’ on the face of the statue, which manifests that the sculptor detailed the emotions of the subject impeccably. Ironically, even though those emotions were flawlessly depicted on the lifeless statue, both the sculptor and his subject have departed long ago. On the pedestal of the statue appears the words, 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’. But around the decaying ruin of the statue, nothing remains, only the “lone and level sands,” which stretch out around it.

It is the tendency of humans to accumulate wealth in the form of gold, bank balances, land and building property as much as we can gather without any limitation for the sake of our progeny with the belief that those later generations thereafter will enjoy the wealth and will be safe and sound. Even though we are certain about the inevitable change that is death, we crave mindlessly beyond our necessities for the welfare of future generations assuming that they can survive purely on wealth. In reality, material wealth alone is not what we should leave behind, it is the legacy of virtue, character and contribution to society that the next generation must emulate. Such legacy is more everlasting than material wealth. Even after reading history books, we don’t realise that kingdoms and empires have fallen with their wealth diminished or eroded. The ramparts of the forts and palaces of past great emperors and kings are now historical tourist spots, where we feel the awe of the pomp and splendour of those rulers listening to the local guide’s brief, but we do not realise that such immense wealth did not save its future generations and that, in the time to come, we will also be leaving such footprints sunk in dust.

We all make plans but only some result as fruitful as we wish and the rest require to be redone with corrections. Especially, the spurious plans to accumulate wealth will not work and such plans are followed only because of ignorance, for we act without imagining the outcome and at the end we panic without any clue as to how to redeem or repay for all such faults. Finally, life ends in death, which is inevitable. Everything in this life is to be given away, the first being our taxes, which the state demands for its expenditure for the welfare of its people. Whatever retention of wealth by reduction of tax and increase in savings is formulated, over a period of time, we face surprises by way of unexpected exigencies. Accumulation of wealth by wrongful means, once again, becomes a threat by way of taxes, which is also inevitable like death. We have the services of Tax Consultants who provide several formulas to reduce taxation but, ultimately, we end up paying more in some other way. There are no free lunches in this life, one has to pay even for a mini-meal.

Death is the ultimate exit that comes at the end of our journey just like the door at the end of the hallway out into the open and at the time the door opens, we come to reality and feel that we have not lived a life that others can follow. The legacy that even kings such as Ozymandias have left are only the ramparts with his fissured image sunk in the sand. John Lennon of the famous Beatles once said, ‘Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans’.

Benjamin Franklin, one of the forefathers and a signatory of the American Constitution, in the year 1787, said, “Our new Constitution is now established and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Benjamin Franklin, along with other legendary leaders such as George Washington, laid a strong foundation for the future generations of the United States of America, after which the country earned the popular tag ‘The Land of Opportunity’. But it could not stop the countless deaths of its innocent citizens in the Gulf, Syrian, Bosnian and Afghan wars, and also many more due to COVID-19. These, apart from the financial scams and crumbling of the industrial and banking institutions for the past few years, could not be avoided, despite a robust Constitution. Hence, the certainty of death and taxes cannot be doubted.