God as the Divine Chartered Accountant!

By Niggy Dolcy

Just a few months after the financial year is over the final date for paying your income tax arrives. Perhaps this is how it is in many countries. There is a deadline before which you should file your tax returns or else you would be required to pay a penalty. And so, this is a really busy time for taxpayers and for chartered accountants (CAs) who help people file their income tax returns.

Some years ago, my annual income arrived at the slab that requires one to pay income tax. At that time, one needed to send all of one’s relevant documents to one’s CA by post or visit him in person with them. But now with things going digital and online, it is much easier and faster to get this work done by email. Still, the income tax paying month can be a bit of a tense time for some people, as it is for me. You need to be on time with all your documents ready, send them off to your CA, and then wait for him to process them. You hope and pray that your CA does what he needs to on time and doesn’t delay things because he has so many other clients to serve. You want to request him to please do what is required well before the last date—because you don’t want to have to pay a fine—but then you also don’t want to irritate him, which you might if you told him that. Then, sometimes only just a few days before the last date for paying your taxes, your CA tells you the amount you need to pay, after which he files your tax returns and informs you, much to your relief, that it’s all finally done and over with! How happy, how free, you then feel!

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This year, as before, while by God’s grace, I sent all my relevant documents to my CA, still, I fretted a bit about when he might do the needful. Would he do it on time? Would I get the One Time Password (OTP) from the tax authorities informing me that my tax returns had been filed? What if my phone conked off just when the OTP was due to arrive? Doubts about things like that. You know how the worrying mind works, don’t you?

It’s silly and awful to worry actually, though maybe it’s also only human to. The best way to stop worrying on such occasions, when doubts assail the mind, is to put one’s faith in God. So, for instance, if you worry about whether your tax returns would be filed properly and well on time, do all what you need to in terms of getting all your relevant documents and sending them to your CA well in advance, but, along with that, also whisper a prayer to God to bless the whole process and to also bless your CA and you, yourself.

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Just the other day, when I was waiting for my CA to do the needful with regard to filing my income tax returns, the thought came to me that while I so wanted my CA to do what he needed to, I wasn’t so keen or aware about what one can call the Divine CA of our lives—that is, God. Human CAs handle our financial accounts when we are here, on Planet Earth, but when we leave this realm we will come face-to-face with God, before whom we will have to face an account of every single deed we had done while we were here. Doesn’t that make God, in some sense, the Divine CA? While a human CA manages only our financial accounts, the Omniscient Divine CA oversees the account of all our deeds of our whole life, from the moment we are born till our very last breath! Just think of that! The tax returns we get our CA to file annually are only on our assessed income for that year, but God, as the Divine CA, will assess our entire life and then judge us. Now, isn’t that awesome!

Silly me! There I was, fretting about my CA, wanting him to do what he needed to with my tax thing superfast, but was I truly aware of the Divine CA, who has been the Auditor, as it were, of all my deeds so far, the way I have lived my life all these years? While I so wanted my CA to file my income tax returns on time so that I wouldn’t need to pay a penalty, was I aware of the penalty I would need to pay if I failed to live the sort of life that the Divine CA wanted me to?

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As long as we live on this planet, we all have to do our duties—and this includes paying our taxes on time, for which purpose CAs perform a valuable service. At the same time, though, we should be aware of the reality and the presence of the Divine CA, the Auditor, as it were, of our entire life and every single aspect of it. Yes, it’s a relief when you get an OTP on your phone from the tax authorities informing you that your taxes have been successfully filed, but what about also wanting to get a good OTP, as it were, from God when we reach the end of our lives, when this One Time Password will ‘take’ us to eternal life, which could be either blessed Heaven or Hell as per the Divine CA’s judgment?