They Also Serve

It's a good wind that blows no ill. April's breezes brought welcome boons: a respite from steam heat, restorative glimpses of crocus and forsythia, the first game of the new baseball season. April also brought federal income tax time--and the searches for misplaced receipts, much desperate arithmetic, and the disappointments of finding that due payments turn out to be larger or refunds smaller than expected.

The total federal take from personal income tax this year will amount to an estimated $45 billion, a record high (see tax story page 26). Americans are not the world's most heavily taxed people, but they fork out the most. Inevitably, there was grumbling, but much of it seemed for the record. Men have hated taxes ever since the dawn of civilization, and in years past, taxpayer discontent has led to rebellions--including, in some simplified versions of U.S. history, the violent tax protests that brought on the U.S. Revolution. In the light of such a past, there seemed a docile if grudging inevitability about the way most U.S. taxpayers shuffled in to pay up. Chicagoan Robert Sassetti. who as a public accountant has plenty of opportunity to observe taxpayers, thinks: "Most people now have a much more sober attitude toward income taxes than they used to have. They seem to want to support the Government.The nation is growing up to realize that we have a good thing here in the U.S., and people want to keep it going."

Looking at the headlines last week, a taxpayer could see plenty of cause for his high tax bite--and maybe, more than usual, tended to connect the two. The headlines out of Cuba, Brazil and Argentina might make him wonder whether the Alliance for Progress was worth it--or more necessary than ever. Guerrilla warfare in South Viet Nam and an easing of crisis in Berlin were the kinds of ups and downs of Communist harassment he had learned to live with. The lull in Berlin could remind him that there would be no such breathing space without the tax-supported military strength of the U.S.

President Kennedy, like his predecessor, sometimes speaks of a need for "sacrifices"--but the only actual sacrifice demanded of most Americans these days is that they pay their taxes. Thinking of John Glenn and his fellow astronauts, of U.S. helicopter pilots in South VietNam, of Peace Corps volunteers and foreign-aid technicians in remote parts of the world, of Strategic Air Command flyers on alert, the stay-at-home taxpayer making out a check to the Internal Revenue Service this week could console himself with the thought that he, too, was doing his part: they also serve who only pay their tax.

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