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Three days ago was the dreaded April 15, the day when the IRS and the Federal government demands that you file your Federal income taxes and allow the government to confiscate what they determine to be their “fair share” of what you should pay them. In light of April 15, it is a good time to review what the Tax Foundation calls Tax Freedom Day. Consider the Foundation’s definition directly from their website: "Tax Freedom Day® is the day when the nation as a whole has earned enough money to pay off its total tax bill for the year. Tax Freedom Day provides Americans with an easy way to gauge the overall tax take-a task that can otherwise be daunting due to the multiplicity of taxes at various levels of government and "hidden" taxes and fees that are often buried in the cost of living. Tax Freedom Day computed by dividing total tax collections by the nation's income, as reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Every dollar that is officially called income by the government is counted, and every payment that is officially considered a tax is counted. The resulting percentage is then converted into days of a 365-day calendar year." Recent news reports have reported about how taxpayer wealth was used to study the sexual habits of snails in New Zealand, about a video game that was developed at a cost of about half a million dollars to simulate high school prom week, how almost half a million dollars was spent to develop an instruction process for how to wear a condom and many other such nonsense. These types of government expenses result in the following taxation disgraces: - In 2013, Americans will pay $2.76 trillion in Federal taxes of all kinds and $1.45 trillion in state and local taxes of all kinds, for a total tax bill of $4.22 trillion. - This $4.22 trillion is 29.4% of the nation’s total income. - April 18th is 29.4% into the calendar year and thus, tax freedom day, on average for the entire country, is April 18th . - Thus, since January 1 until today, you have not been working for yourself and your family, you have been working for the American political class and the governments that it operates. - Tax freedom day is five days later than last year, i.e. you started working for yourself and family on April 13 last year. - This $4.22 trillion comes out to an astounding $11.5 billion being spent every day of the year, over $480 million every hour of the year, and over $8 million every minute of the year, astounding and disgraceful numbers. - April 18 assumes that you were working seven days a week to get to your tax freedom day. If you omit weekends and only consider a typical five day work week, all of those stupid expenses that the government incurs pushes your tax freedom day out until May 29th. - This recalculated tax freedom day covers almost five full months of each working American’s work effort or 42% of the year. - But while the $4.22 trillion is what government at all levels collect in this country, it is not what they spend, the Federal government sells Treasury bonds in order to finance the shortfall between what it gathers as taxes and what it actually spends, resulting in deficit spending just about every year. - If we low ball an average of $1 trillion a year in deficit spending, similar to the deficits the Obama administration has been running every year, that $4.22 trillion increases by $1 trillion of about 24%. - This 24% increase would push the April 18 tax freedom day out to about May 12th or so. - If you repeat the exercise and calculation above where we only consider weekdays, the true tax freedom day that covers the Federal government’s deficit spending and the typical five day workweek pushes the tax freedom day into early July, ironically just in time for the July 4th Independence Day celebrations. - Thus, Americans are working about half of the year to support government in this country. Outrageous. One has to ask oneself, “When does taxation become repression?” By sending 30% to 50%, depending on how you want to calculate tax freedom day, of the wealth we create every year from our hard work to government entities we see our freedoms and liberty severely curtailed: - Such high levels of taxation restrict our freedom to send our kids to the schools we would like to see them attend. - Such high levels of taxation restrict our freedom to live where we want to live and in the type of homes we want to live in. - Such high levels of taxation restrict our freedom to start our own business to better the lives of others and help fulfill our dreams. - Such high levels of taxation restrict our freedom to live the type of retirement we would like to live. - Such high levels of taxation restrict our freedom to live our lives the way we would like to live them. But we cannot exercise those freedoms because the American political class loses hundreds of billions of dollars a year from waste and criminal fraud in the Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamp, and other welfare programs. The IRS is so incompetent that it readily admits that it fails to collect over $380 billion a year from tax evaders, increasing the amount of taxes honest Americans have to pay. And of course billions and billions of dollars are spent and wasted every year on snail sex, prom video games, and thousands of other nonsensical expenditures. Again, when does taxation become repression? I think we have crossed that line when 30-50% of our hard earned dollars are taken by politicians with far less in value returned. Think about it, politicians are spending $8 million a MINUTE, are you getting $8 million in value a MINUTE? I doubt it. Consider the following insight from comedian Dennis Miller: “Our forefathers would never put up with this crap. They were blowing people’s heads off for just taxing their breakfast beverage. And it wasn’t even coffee.” One should never condone or encourage that someone’s head be blown off or any other kind of violence. But from a tea, coffee, and tax perspective, he does have a point.
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tax foundation, tax freedom day, national debt, deficit, repression, medicare, medicaid, social security,
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