The Tax Foundation today announced the date of Tax Freedom Day, for 2013. However, unless you've been living in a cave, you'll likely not be surprised to learn that you'll have to work longer to pay your taxes this year, than you did last year - five days longer, as a matter of fact.
In case you're not familiar with what Tax Freedom Day is, it's the date on which the average US taxpayer has worked long enough, in the current year, to earn enough money, to pay all of his taxes for the whole year. This concept of measuring the tax load by how long you have to work to pay your taxes, was created as a way to put the tax load into perspective. It's something that everyone can relate to.
This year, Tax Freedom Day will occur on April 18th and is based on the fact that taxes represent 29.4% of total income for Americans. That means that Americans will pay more in taxes in 2013, than they pay for food, clothing, and housing combined.
As mentioned above, this means that this year, you'll have to work 5 days longer than you had to work to pay your taxes in 2012. The Tax Foundation attributes most of this increase in the tax load to the costs of Obamacare and the "Fiscal Cliff" deal. (Thanks, Obama.)
So stop for just a moment and think about the significance of that date. It means that almost a third of your work life this year will be spent working for the government. However, that's not the worst of it, since the basic Tax Freedom Day only includes real taxes that will be paid this year. It doesn't include the effect of the budget deficit, which is caused by the government spending more money than they collect in taxes. This is money that they borrow and for which we are all liable.
The Tax Foundation tells us that when you include the effect of the deficit, the 2013 Tax Freedom Day will not come until May 6. That’s an additional 21 days of your hard work that will go to pay for government spending on borrowed money - money that will eventually have to be paid back by you or your children… with interest.
In other words, in order to pay off your tax bill for the year and your share of the budget deficit, you will work for more than a third of the year. Think about that. More than a third of your work – more than a third of everything that you earn – will be to benefit the government and NOT you.
It should be noted that Tax Freedom Day is the average for all Americans. Since some states have higher taxes than others, Tax Freedom Day does vary by state. The latest state Tax Freedom Day is in high-tax Connecticut, on May 13th. The earliest is in low-tax Mississippi, on March 29th. The image at the top of this article shows the date by state. Visit the Tax Foundation website for more details for each state.
Along similar lines, and to help further put the real tax load into perspective, Allegiance Books, publisher of "The Rich Don't Pay Tax! …Or Do They?", has created the Tax Freedom Clock. It's a live, embeddable clock that continuously counts down the months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds till Tax Freedom, as determined by the Tax Foundation and then starts counting up from that time. This clock actually goes a step further than just Tax Freedom Day and counts down to the second of Tax Freedom, which is April 18th at 7:26:24 AM.
As such, the Tax Freedom Clock will act as a constant reminder of how much longer you'll have to work for the government, before you can start earning your own money or if Tax Freedom Day has passed, then for how little time you've actually been earning your own money.
It's a Flash web widget that, as mentioned above, can be easily embedded on many websites - specifically those that allow object or embed code. Just copy the object or embed code for the widget and paste it into the HTML of your page. That's all there is to it.
The Tax Freedom Clock is automatically updated to reflect the new date every year, at about this time, as soon as the Tax Foundation announces that date. That means that you don't need to do a thing to update the date on the clock on your site, each year. It's all automatic. Check out the Tax Freedom Clock and grab the embed code at http://therichdontpaytax.com/blog/?page_id=205
Then remind your friends of just how much of their time they spend working for the government.
Maybe it's time for The FairTax (HR-25 & S-122). Under the FairTax, people won't need a Tax Freedom Clock to remind them how much tax they're paying, since under the FairTax, you see exactly how much tax you're paying at every retail purchase of a new product or service. It then follows that, since the voters see exactly how much they are paying in tax, Congress won't be able to so easily raise taxes on individuals, by pretending that corporations or other entities will be paying those tax increases, like they do with the current broken system.
It is a truism that "Only people pay tax." Corporations and other entities don't pay tax. They just pass their tax load through, in the form of higher prices, to living, breathing people, who ultimately pay all taxes. The FairTax keeps the focus on that fact. So under the FairTax, if taxes go up for any reason, the taxpayers/voters will see it immediately and most of the lawmakers who voted to raised those taxes will be looking for work after the next election.
Tax Freedom Day and the Tax Freedom Clock keep the focus on the real problem, which is a tax code that hides so much of our tax load that it takes a staff of professional economists at a think tank, like the Tax Foundation, to figure it out. The FairTax is the solution.
Comments