Your Business and Income Taxes

As someone who has prepared many tax returns for others, it is always interesting to see how owners repond to paying and filing income taxes each tax season. Owners often have a mindset of profit minimalization as an aspect of reducing income taxes. I want to address business owner’s attitudes and mindsets towards income taxes and their businesses.

We need to repent of any incorrect attitudes we may have towards paying income taxes. Repent means a change of mind, a change of conduct. Taxes are necessary for governments to effectively carry out their responsibilities. I suggest we bless what we send to the government, be thankful for our ability to pay taxes and ask God to bless and multiply those funds. 

Tax avoidance by reducing the income in our businesses manifest the poverty spirit. As a good steward, you should prayerfully seek and apply to your business every deduction and opportunity afforded to you by the tax laws. But when one actively seeks to minimize profit as an approach to their business – which God owns and gives to you as a blessing to manage for Him – this is of the poverty spirit and is idolatry.

God has called us all to fulfill His mandate of Gen. 1:28, be fruitful, multiply and have dominion (influence). It is our responsibility to fulfill this mandate by tuning up and revving up the economic engines in our businesses so that we can and will fulfill God’s mandate.

When we purposely minimize our profits, we are consciously and unconsciously destroying, minimizing, reducing and breaking down the economic engine in our businesses.

Incorrect mindsets cause us to miss the present truth – our God is a God of abundance. God calls us to be fruitful and multiply and as His sons we can choose to live in abundance. Poverty is the nature and essence of the god of this world.

Our enemy wants to steal, kill and destroy the economic engine of your business and if you allow it, you will be in a less favorable position to fully accomplish all God has designed for you.

Businesses are the life blood of a nation. As the businesses go – so goes the nation. As many of this nation’s businesses are operating with the business model of profit minimalization to avoid paying taxes, the economic engines become stalled in individual businesses and this spreads throughout the country, reducing the national economic engine.

Adopting a poverty mindset places one in the same position as the servant in Luke 19 who was given a mina to do business with. When the master returned, he found this servant buried the mina and called him untrustworthy.

Playing games with the numbers destroys the validity of the data you are attempting to manage by. Quit playing games with your numbers and focus on providing greater value with your products/services. Serving those you are called to serve (thus building your economic engine in your business) and the fruit of your efforts in service to others will result in profitability.

There is a two-verse story in 2 Samuel 23:11-12.  Israel had some land the Philistines wanted. Israel’s troops fled from them except for Shammah who took his stand in the middle of the field. He defended it and struck the Philistines down, and the Lord brought about a great victory. Israel’s troops saw the size of the Philistines and determined that the field was not worth fighting and dying for. Why did Shammah stay and the other guys on his team run in fear? Here’s the answer - and it’s a big deal to all of us today.

God gave the Israelites a dream of the promised land. A few years later the Israelites were willing to give away territory and their dream. When you start giving away the territory of your God-given dreams, you are giving away a part of your heart.

Shammah had a perspective we need today. God is looking for contenders for the field. The great adventure awaits all who are willing to step out in faith to save their own dreams. Jesus said I have come that you may have life and have it to the full. Folks, life to the full is taking a stand in the middle of a field of dreams.