Those of us fortunate enough to receive a tax form will recognise that its completion poses both a threat and a challenge. The threat is that it will take away some of our hard gotten gains and the challenge is to complete the document honestly.

This week is was revealed by an International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that 323 Irish firms took the Panama route for their clients (who need not be Irish) and dealt with the Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca.
This firm specialises in providing a home for money whilst concealing the name of the real owner. Apparently the usual practice is for the money to follow a circuitous route using various names eventually ending up in a bank in another jurisdiction such as the Channel Isles. Access to the money by the ultimate beneficial owner (the real owner) is possible when the bank receives the documentation prepared by Mossack Fonseca.

This ploy has proved attractive to many people not least heads of States!
The fact that what they are doing is quite legal (something that may or may not be said of how the monies were originally earned) lures people into the network.
The Panama based law firm leaked 11.5 million files some going back as far as 1977. These are being picked over by 376 journalists from 76 countries so we may expect to hear much more of the secret activities of the money launderers, sanction dodgers, tax evaders and their friends.

We live in a broken world where the top 60 wealthy people have assets equal to the bottom 3.5 billion. Little wonder there is a market for those who want to squirrel away their wealth concealing it from everyone else!

But what about us? Are we simply to say “I am not like other people” (St Luke Chapter 18 verse 11). “I am the honest one and my honesty must commend itself to God. I don’t fiddle my tax in fact I may pay more than is strictly required!” Or do we take the easier moralism road that is prepared to stake everything on having done our best.

Whichever it is we fall so easily into the mind-set of the Pharisee who added up his assets and, although he would not say it publicly, reckoned he was a cut above his contemporaries especially those who are so dishonest with money.

The only way is via a repentance which avoids the charade of outward grief and inward turmoil but casts itself on the mercy of a loving God who accepts us for Jesus sake.
“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his son as a propitiation for our sins” (1 John Chapter 4 verse 10).

The believer’s wealth is not on earth but in heaven (St Matthew Chapter 6 verse 20).
We brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world. Our need is godliness with contentment (1 Timothy Chapter 6 verses 7 to 9).

May it be so with you.