With the arrival of Tax Day each year, the organs of the prestige press resound with pious talk about the civic duty to pay ?our fair share? of the costs of government. Clergy often get into the act , misapplying the Biblical injunction to render to Caesar that which is his.

Such statist homilies omit some critical facts.

First of all, when the central government can inflate the currency to pay for deficit spending, direct taxes are unnecessary. This was admitted by Beardsley Ruml, chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in a 1946 essay entitled ?Taxes for Revenue are Obsolete.? The Income Tax, Ruml admitted, exists primarily as a means of social engineering.

The second neglected fact is that Jesus's teaching about rendering to Caesar places limits on government: It can only claim that to which it is legally and morally entitled. Our Constitution lists fewer than two dozen specific purposes for which Congress can appropriate money. All other spending is unauthorized and thus illegal ? and taxation for such purposes is therefore theft.

Let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.