Some how, some way and for some years now, I always get notice informing me when you and I stop working to pay the government, and start working to help ourselves and our families. Tax Freedom Day, the day when we have collectively earned enough money to pay our federal, state taxes, arrived in Michigan this past Monday, April 20.
The good news, Michigan was the 28th state to reach Tax Freedom Day, 4 days earlier than national average. This, according to the annual report by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, national Tax Freedom Day falls on April 24, 114 days into the year and nine days after the tax filing deadline.
The report went on to say each state’s total federal, state, and local tax burden obviously varies greatly. Tax Freedom Day arrived earliest in Louisiana on April 2 and Mississippi on April 4. Connecticut and New Jersey will be the last to reach Tax Freedom Day this year on May 13.
‘Tax Freedom Day gives us a vivid representation of how much we pay for the goods and services provided by governments at all levels,? said Tax Foundation Economist Kyle Pomerleau. ‘Arguments can be made for if and why the tax bill is too high or too low, but in order to have an honest discussion, it’s important for taxpayers to understand cost of government. Tax Freedom Day helps people relate to that cost.?
Here are some more nifty points from the report: Americans will collectively spend more on taxes in 2015 than they will on food, clothing, and housing combined.
Americans will pay $3.3 trillion in federal taxes and $1.5 trillion in state and local taxes, for a total bill of more than $4.8 trillion, or 31.1 percent of the nation’s income.
Gulp.
More on taxes than we spend on food for our families. That’s a sobering.
Want more sobering news? I went back to last year’s column (2014) and saw I wrote, ‘Okay everybody, take a long, deep breath. Take your eyes away from the page, close ’em and let that breath leave your body. Relax. Come this Thursday, April 17, every upstanding, taxpaying Michiganian will have theoretically worked enough this year to pay off the government. Thursday is Tax Freedom Day. Feel better? Me neither.?
I went back further into the archives. In 2013 we Michigan taxpayers were slaves to the government from January 1 through April 14.
In two short years we have lost six days (more than a work week) to the taxman. We toil about a third of our productive lives not for the betterment of ourselves and our families, rather for an overly bureaucratic and bloated government.
To be fair (Am I not always fair? Do not remind me of my rant about parking in Royal Oak, because if you do, I will be forced to tell you I now have free parking in that fair city.) I went back further into the hallowed halls of Don’tRushMedom. I unearthed from 2006 we taxpayers worked for ‘The Man? 116 days — from January 1, through April 26.
I know I should be kicking up my heals, dancing a jig and thanking Benevolent Big Brothers for reducing our working sentence by six whole days!
But, I’m not.
Donny Downer here looks back to last year and says, ‘I’m working three more days for the bureaucrats and three less days to better me, my family and my community.?
Hot damn!
I know, I know. I cannot have my cake and eat it, too. We gotta? pay for roads. (Props to Prop 1? No.) We need to help the needy, pay teachers, protect and defend our borders and that takes money. Thing is I know lots of people who are working harder for the same wages they have had for the better part of a decade only the price of goods and services continues to increase. As well as taxes.
So, as a legal, born and bred American, it is my right, no, my solemn duty, to moan, groan and grumble about taxes and government. I’m exercising my rights, enumerated in the Bill of Rights via The United States Constitution to express my displeasure.
I know we need to pay taxes, but I would LOVE to see exactly how much ‘revenue? is brought in from our toils and see exactly how our tax money is spent. Transparency — just like pixie dust and unicorns — is purely a fable perpetuated by those on the government dole. I wish fairy tales were true. Of course, as I tell my sons, ‘If wishes were horses, we’d all be riding.
Okay. I am getting off my soap box now. And back to working.