Tax Freedom Day

Tax Freedom Day is the first day of the year in which a nation as a whole has theoretically earned enough income to pay its taxes. Every dollar that is officially considered income by the government is counted, and every payment to the government that is officially considered a tax is counted. Taxes at all levels of government – local, state and federal – are included.

According to Neil Veldhuis, Director of Fiscal Studies, Fraser Institute, the purpose of Tax Freedom Day is to provide citizens of tax-paying countries with a metric with which to estimate their "total tax bill". The premise is that by comparing the benefits received by citizens to the amount they pay in taxes, the value of paying taxes can be assessed.

The concept of Tax Freedom Day was developed in 1948 by Florida businessman Dallas Hostetler, who trademarked the phrase "Tax Freedom Day" and calculated it each year for the next two decades. In 1971, Hostetler retired and transferred the trademark to the Tax Foundation. The Tax Foundation has calculated Tax Freedom Day for the United States ever since, using it as a tool for illustrating the proportion of national income diverted to fund the annual cost of government programs. In 1990, the Tax Foundation began calculating the specific Tax Freedom Day for each individual state.

Tax Freedom Day only examines taxation, and does not account for debt and inflation as means for funding government.

Leap years have one day more, 29 February. This creates some bias in Tax Freedom Day charts. However, this bias is equal to roughly 1/366, which is about 0.27%.

In the United States, it is annually calculated by the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based tax research organization. In the U.S., Tax Freedom Day for 2015 is April 24, for a total average effective tax rate of 31 percent of the nation's income. The latest that Tax Freedom Day has occurred was May 1 in 2000. In 1900, Tax Freedom Day arrived January 22, for an effective average total tax rate of 5.9 percent of the nation's income. According to the Tax Foundation, the most important factor driving changes in Tax Freedom Day from year to year is growth in incomes, as the progressive structure of the U.S. federal tax system causes taxes as a percentage of income to rise along with inflation.

Tax Freedom Day varies among the 50 U.S. states, as incomes and state and local taxes differ from state to state. In 2015, Louisiana had the lowest total tax burden, earning enough to pay all their tax obligations by April 2. Connecticut had the heaviest tax burden – Tax Freedom Day there arrived May 13.

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Wikipedia