Tax Freedom Day

The Tax Foundation (www.taxfoundation.org) produces an annual analysis which takes a detailed look at how many days the average American works to pay off the average household tax burden from all government sources. The day where the household stops working to fund the government and starts working for themselves is called Tax Freedom Day.

In March, 2009 the Tax Foundation announced the latest results: the average American household will work until April 13 this year supporting the government's expenses and on April 14 will start working for themselves. This is a little earlier than average for two reasons: 1) the recession has reduced tax collections faster than family income and 2) the stimulus package included some temporary tax cuts that will expire after next year. Thus, an earlier Tax Freedom Day does not mark the beginning of a favorable trend for taxpayers, it may just be an anomaly. Furthermore, according to the Tax Foundation, Americans will pay more in taxes THAN THEY WILL SPEND ON FOOD, CLOTHING AND HOUSING COMBINED. From a freedom perspective, this is just an atrocious statement that we spend more for government than we do for basic living needs.

More bad news. If the Federal deficit effect is taken into account, not just taxes collected which is the basis of Tax Freedom Day, than the April 13 date is actually May 29! According to the Tax Foundation, this is the latest day in the year this deficit-inclusive measure has ever fallen. Try to imagine that date: beginning with January 1st college football games until about the Memorial Day weekend picnic, you are working for the political class and the government. Frightening. And now with the political class wanting to spend trillions of more dollars on health care reform, no end in sight for wasteful pork barrel projects, an escalating Pentagon budget, the need to improve the country's infrastructure, etc., we may get to the point where our pay checks are sent directly to the government and they in turn provide a small stipend back to us each month.

That is why the first three steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" are so important. We must immediately start to reduce the size of government, reduce the deficit and return our wealth back to us, we earned we should keep it.

A final note: according to the Tax Foundation, special condolences should go out to residents of Connecticut (April 30), New Jersey (April 29), New York (April 25) and California (April 20) since these folks have to work the longest to get to their state's Tax Freedom Day. Conversely, Alaska (March 23), Louisiana (March 28) and Mississippi (March 28) get to their Tax Freedom Day the earliest. Still obscene that they have to work almost three months to get there but certainly better than the top four.

More bad news.