Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Tax Freedom Day 2007: April 30

The average American will have to work another 33 days in 2007, until April 30 (a total of 119 days), to pay his/her share of federal, state and local taxes this year, according to an annual study released today by The Tax Foundation. That is two days later than last year's Tax Freedom Day of April 28 (see chart above), and represents 32.69% of the average American's 2007 income.

Comparatively, 100 years ago, the average American worked only 19 days, until January 19, to pay the tax burden then of 5%. Today, Americans work longer to pay for government (120 days) than for food, clothing and housing combined (105 days).

4 Comments:

At 3/28/2007 11:37 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think this graph shows that it took longer to pay for taxes with Pres. Clinton in charge. Then Pres. Bush Jr, steps in and immediately drops the hammer. After everybody is smiling and happy with the cuts, Pres. Bush slides through some quite tax hikes that we should not talk about... Was that original dip of President Bush just for show?

20 day span of fluctuation over the past 25 years doesn't seem to be all that bad, considering the wild fluctuation in political agendas and world economic situations.

What is your take on how the deficit spending will impact the tax situation over the next 15-20 years?

 
At 3/28/2007 12:38 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

That's 240 days too many.

 
At 3/29/2007 3:32 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

No - Not the average American.
Given the uneven distribution of income and taxes we should be looking at the Median income earner to represent the average American.

So I think that the average (median) american is already tax free - whereas the rich ones (top 6%) have a long way to go.

The top 6% of income earners will be tax free around the 28th of June,
whereas the rest - if you make less than around $140K/year were tax free on the 28th of March.

The top 5%-6% of income earners make 1/3rd of the total income, and pay 50% of income taxes. (or thereabouts) I think we can debate on these numbers but any other numbers will be directionally close.

I used approximate numbers up there you might have issues with exact numbers I used - I grabbed them from census bureau and the tax foundation - you can run your own analysis on numbers that you think are more accurate.

It would be interesting to see how the tax free day has shifted by income bracket and see how the average (median) american has really fared

 
At 3/29/2007 3:34 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://www.cbpp.org/taxday98-2.htm

Somewhat dated but still valid criticism.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home