If two of life's irrefutable certainties are indeed taxes and death - although the Tax Working Group which handed in its recommendations this week claims this is not necessarily the case, and that tranches of the well-to-do are able to arrange their affairs so as to nullify taxes altogether - then another is the potential in the life cycle of governments for one to lead to the other.
Hence the irresolute reaction of deputy prime minister and Finance Minister Bill English in the wake of the report's release - not unakin to the utterances of a high-wire artist with a mouth full of cotton wool and an unsettling penchant for looking down.
Mr English refused to be drawn on which, if any, of the TWG's recommendations the Government might be inclined to implement, and when.
In an interview on Thursday he repeatedly parried, demurring instead to the need to consider the range of options as a package.
His caution is understandable and politically astute.
For the reputation of his and Prime Minister John Key's Government, whether it is steady-as-she-goes, or innovative wealth enhancer as promised before the election in 2008, may well rest on what it does about tax.
And the way forward is replete with reefs and other hazards upon which the good ship Key and Co might easily founder.
It is one thing to be presented with a set of options on what, in a political vacuum, a radically reformed tax system might look like; it is quite another to implement effective change without disenfranchising support.
In this respect, the TWG has given the Government much to chew on.
In the first instance, it began by identifying that the tax system in this country is close to breaking down.
It relies heavily on taxes most harmful to growth; it lacks coherence, integrity and fairness; there are significant risks to its long-term sustainability by a perception of unfairness and international competition for capital and labour.
Then it considered and proposed options for reform.
These included aligning the company, top personal and trust tax rates; reducing tax rates across the board; increasing GST from 12.5% to 15%; a range of property and investment related propositions including some form of residential investment property tax reform, and a low-rate land tax; and "targeted options for base-broadening" including changes to depreciation rules.
Given the constrained recessionary environment, the group was required to present its options within a fiscally neutral framework.
And indeed this has been reinforced by Mr English.
If, for example, the tax rates are to be lowered across the board and the level of essential public services is to be maintained, then the money must come from elsewhere in the system.
This might lay the Government open to the charge of playing favourites - of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
As some have already pointed out, an increase in GST will hit the poorer sections of the community hardest and, as the TWG itself said, would therefore have to be accompanied by other compensatory, and probably complex, tax-related measures.
Property taxes - only capital gains tax on the family home has thus far been ruled out - will likewise prove a thorny issue with arguments over the effectiveness of various options and others over their fairness.
There has been much self-flagellation over the imbalance in the domestic economy caused by the Kiwi middle-class love affair with property, but not a lot of analysis of why that might be.
Could it have anything to do with the failure of successive governments sufficiently to regulate the alternatives: the finance sector, and equities market in such a way as to offer reasonable protection for "mum and dad" investors; and, notwithstanding the introduction of KiwiSaver, the equally dismal record on encouraging savings?
In any and all of these areas, the Government stands to incite opposition by rash and isolated moves, including among its "heartland" voters who have come to rely on the rent, depreciation and tax write-offs from their nice little rental earners.
A frontal assault would be seen as reckless politics.
Yet the Government must reduce debt, increase productivity and create wealth.
And it must lay the groundwork in this year's Budget, since in 2011 it will be too close to an election to risk unpopular reform and likely too late to sweeten the electorate with more amenable policies.
Reforming the tax system, among other things to take account that only about a half of a sample of the wealthiest people pay the top marginal tax rate, a fact that Mr English, and doubtless most of the rest of the country, find "astounding", will find favour in many quarters, but not necessarily in those that have traditionally filled the National Party's coffers.
But this Cabinet is by no means the first to find itself confronting unenviable decisions over taxation.
It is the poisoned chalice from which all reforming governments must eventually sup.
Whether Mr Key and Mr English tilt acutely and swallow, or merely gargle and regurgitate, will in the long run mark the measure of their resolve and indeed of their Government.
