Did Apostle Matthew the tax collector stop collecting taxes?

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The tax collectors didn’t actually work for the Roman government. What happened instead was that Rome imposed taxes on the provinces and then auctioned off the right to collect those taxes. Rome got paid up front, and the investor was reimbursed and earned a profit by collecting the taxes established by Rome. He would typically hire several assistants to help enforce the taxes. The problem, however, is that this system tends to turn a blind eye to corruption, as nobody in power cares if the tax collectors inflate the duties and pocket the difference. The price the right to collect taxes got at auction reflected what Rome actually expected the assessed taxes to be, but tax collectors didn’t merely speculate that they could lawfully collect more than Rome planned, but often imposed extra charges on the people, enriching themselves by extortion.
 
I don’t think St Matthew is still collecting taxes, so he must have stopped at some point. 🤔

The Roman tax system introduced new monetary policies that required assigning values to everything. The tax collector was usually the assessor, determining the value of each chicken and every cow. They probably did a fairly consistent job, but everybody would always disagree. How could my well cared for chicken only be worth the same as my lazy neighbor’s? Haggling was being undermined by currencies and coins that Standardized values…

St Matthew probably left all that behind when he started following Jesus. A new way of valuing the world came with a faith in Jesus, something that may have distracted him from his earlier life.
 
St Peter said: ‘behold we have left everything to follow you’ in Matt 19:27.
Therefore it is implied that Matthew left his job like the others.
 
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