Thursday, April 24, 2008

Happy Belated Tax Freedom Day!

I hope you were all celebrating yesterday. It was Tax Freedom Day -- the first day of 2008 that paycheck earners worked for their families, after finally paying their tax burden.

According to the Tax Foundation, out of 365 days, the average American taxpayer works 74 days to pay off his or her federal tax obligation, and another 39 days to reimburse state and local tax collectors.

So this year, March 22nd was the last day of working for Uncle Sam and March 23rd was the first day of working for what you're REALLY working for...

Comparatively, we spend more days working to pay our taxes than we do working to buy food, clothing, and housing combined. Interesting, huh? Don't forget it in November...

11 comments:

Henry Cate said...

I would love to see that chart over the last hundred plus years.

I remember reading that a vast majority of time was spent just on getting enough food to eat.

The nursery rhyme about a bad boy being sent to bed was because often the family only had one set of clothes per child.

Cari said...

Interesting! Good post... :D

Cari said...

Hannah's comment was really mine! She started a blog too and it was signed in under me!

Cari said...

Ugh!! She changed my name to hers in the profile! See what you have to look forward to! :)

Charmaine said...

Henry,

I don't know where to find the whole chart for that period, but here is a link to just the tax portion since 1900:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/386.html

We've gone from 5.9% of income in 1900 to 30.8% this year.

Laurie and company said...

wow...that just really depressed me! I think I'm going to go lay down now. :)

Sherry at the Zoo said...

Wow....I'm with Laurie. This calls for a nap!

Henry Cate said...

Charmaine, thank you for the link.

I've added a post about the data on my blog.

Laurie and company said...

Hi!

We miss you! hope you feel up to "bloggin" again really soon!

How ARE you?

Peace, my sister!
LY

Laurie and company said...

ummm, so I guess it's safe to assume that you are officially done with this blog!

hmmm. missin' my friends bloggedness.

how are you otherwise? anything new and exciting?

LY

Sherry at the Zoo said...

Hey YOU! ARe you still there? Are you going to start blogging again? PRetty please?