Think you finished paying your taxes a week or so ago? Nope, you just finished filing your taxes. To actually pay for their combined state, local, federal, excise, property, and other taxes, Americans now work about 117 days per year. That 117th day would be today--April 27th. From now on, you're working for yourself and your family, at least until January 1, 2003. Don't you feel great about it?
There is some good news: last year, Tax Freedom day was April 29th. So it looks like good ol' George W. managed to shave off two days with those "extreme" and "irresponsible" tax cuts of his. Although there is a war on, so I guess we can't complain too much. But I hope that when the smoke clears our masters in Washington and our state capitals find a way to grant us a little more freedom from this burden.
For more information on Tax Freedom day and the history of taxation of the American people, see the Tax Foundation's web site. You might also want to learn a little more about the proposed alternative to the income tax, the Fair Tax, which you can learn about here.
A little research shows that the proposal you are promoting is duplicitous and dangerous.
Check these links:
http://www.ctj.org/html/nytsales.htm
http://www.ncpa.org/pi/taxes/april97a.html
A little more research shows that the idea I'm promoting--along with other unpaid volunteers, thank you very much--is not "duplicitious" and is certainly not "dangerous."
With all due respect to the analysis on the NCPA site by Bruce Bartlett, there have been other analyses, many of which are quite easily available on the Fair Tax web site. One thing we need to remember is that the compliance costs on the income tax are simply staggering, not to mention hideously corrupting to the political process.
As for the link to the ctj web site: their analysis is shallow, petty, and mean-spirited, but contains little of substance. If bashing "the rich" turns you on, that's fine, but it's not very constructive in my view. Peddling envy may play well with some people, but I'd like to think most Americans have outgrown out of that kind of mean-spirited selfishness. Under the Fair Tax, "the rich" will continue to pay the overwhelming majority of taxes, just as they always have, without any of the deductions that they get under the current massively unfair system.
Tremendously worded, keep up the tremendou work