My father always tought me to remember that "one thing is knowing something, a totally other is explaining it to someone else". Equipped with that essential truth, this Friday, I nervously headed for an early morning presentation with the mission to explain what the profession of a tax consultant entails.
My audience consisted of a curiousity driven crowd of 30 individuals which may very well harbour a future computer wizard, media giant, entrepreneur, a judge or even some sort of politician marking the 21st century, but above all one thing they will all have in common is the genuine Jesuit philisophy large parts of the world are vividly (re-)discovering with the acts and words of a new Sumo Pontifice in Rome.
The crowd in question was the class of my 7 year old son. How inspiring it is to spend some classtime with those that are so much in the centre of matters, albeit unconsciously for the present wrong reasons and unaffected by the corrupted thrives of those that claim decisonmaking power in today's small world.
In the back of my head I sought to store the severe drawback Portugal would see that day on the constitutional test of a struggling goverment's budgetting as well as the wordlwide releases on agressive (offshore) tax planning that had been coming to the surface throughout the week.
It was exciting to see 20 hands in the air upon the question "who knows what taxes are?" and quite a few prompt responses on what happens with the money we pay to a shop owner . Particularly interesting was the pausing silence on the question "so why must we pay taxes?".
Lots of Robin Hoods in the make. There is a future, after all.
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