Page 3: Tax Freedom — Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

Every year, the non-partisan Tax Foundation calculates how many days Americans must work to pay all local, state and federal taxes. This year the foundation had good and bad news for taxpayers.

The good news: Tax Freedom Day arrived this year on April 11, the earliest since 1967. The bad news: Unless there's a change in the tax law-which anticipates the phasing out of the Bush tax cuts and an increasing number of middle-class workers being forced to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax-Tax Freedom Day will recede in the coming decade, until 2014, when it will return to April 29.

That's where it was in 2001, when President Clinton left office.

The Tax Foundation calculates Tax Freedom Day by dividing the per capita total tax burden on Americans by per capita income. That yields the total effective tax rate, which this year is 27.8%. On April 11, 27.8% of the year has been consumed. Thus, politicians this year will seize the equivalent of every penny every American earns up to that day just to pay for government.

Because each state has a different total tax burden, each state also has a different effective tax rate. In the table at the bottom of this page, states are ranked from the most heavily taxed (Connecticut) to the least heavily taxed (Alaska).

This table shows where the money we earn this year will go. It reveals a disturbing fact: Americans will work longer (101 days) to pay for government, than they will work to pay for food, clothing and medical care combined (96 days). They will work almost as long to pay for just the federal government (65 days), as they will to pay for housing (66 days).

Judging from the tax burden Congress places on Americans, it must be assumed that politicians in Washington, D.C., now believe big government is just as important to Americans as putting roofs over our heads.