Happy Tax Day!

In 2017, it will take 113 days for taxpayers to pay the country’s tax burden, which includes $1.5 trillion in local and state taxes and $3.5 trillion in federal taxes, equaling 31 percent of America’s income. But that’s not all. If you include federal borrowing, which represents future taxes the government must collect to pay the bills, Tax Freedom Day would occur 14 days later this year on May 7.

To put this year’s total tax burden into perspective, the latest date for Deficit-Inclusive Tax Freedom Day took place during World War II almost three weeks later than this year’s date, occurring on May 25, 1945.

How Expensive is Government?

Americans will collectively pay close to $1 trillion more for taxes than will be spent on essentials like food, clothing, and housing combined.

Source: “Americans Work Almost 4 Months Just to Pay Taxes.” on FEE.org.

The progressive income tax is another deterrent to capital accumulation. The tax is often talked about as if it were devised to take from the “haves” It should be better understood, however, as taking from those who are “getting,” or trying to accumulate savings. A graduated income tax does not, per se, tax wealth that has been accumulated in earlier times; rather, it taxes current income. It bears particularly hard on potential new enterprisers.

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There are certain corollary principles which should control taxation and help to keep it within proper limits.

• 1. All taxes should be uniform. Whether levied upon income, wealth, or spending —e.g., sales taxes—a uniform rate should apply in each particular case. This is not only the just approach to taxation but also it removes the lure of redistribution by which many people approve graduated taxes.

•2. Taxes should be tied as closely as possible to the object for which the money is to be spent. The payment of a toll for the use of a road will illustrate the principle, though it is not always possible to link the taxation as closely as that to its purpose.

•3. Taxes should never be levied for any purpose other than raising revenue. If they are imposed for controlling, regulating or prohibiting something, taxes become not only destructive in character but also in intent, and are an abuse of governmental power.

•4. Government spending should be limited to that necessary to maintaining the peace and providing those services to which the use of force is necessary and proper. All limitation of government action is a limit on spending, hence upon taxation, and those who seek precise limits would do well to concentrate their efforts on placing these on government action.

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Thomas Jefferson once said that what was wanted was “a wise and frugal Government, which… shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” Apropos the axioms announced in Chief Justice Marshall’s decision, it is in order to add: “a wise and frugal government which will destroy as little as possible by the taxes it imposes.”

Source: “The Power to Tax Is the Power to Destroy.” on FEE.org.

Another article to read on the subject: “How The Power To Tax Destroys.” on Mises.org.

Okay, maybe not so happy.