Tax Freedom Day 2009

Received my tax forms back on Saturday and in order to not ruin my weekend I waited until today to open them up.

A quick rough calculation tells me that my personal tax freedom day this year is around June 19th. According to the numbers on the forms, 46.3% of my taxable income last year went to the Federal or State government via my "income tax" forms.

Obviously this is not totally accurate since there are more taxes that get paid through the year that are not accounted for there, like sales taxes, real estate taxes, gas taxes, etc, etc. That would be too depressing to figure out while writing out the checks. I'll wait for the pain to subside before making an attempt to figure that out, probably pushes the date into July.

I didn't include the cost of having my taxes prep'ed either since the cost of my sanity is worth more than my accountant friend charges! I decided after doing my taxes the first year of being self employed that if I continued to prepare them I would end up in Montana bunker on about 50 acres surrounded by barbed wire, owning a herd of dobermans with Ted Kazinski as my neighbor.

I was wondering %-wise if you guys ever figured your personal Tax Freedom Day?

Why? To get more pissed off than I already am? Tax freedom day is an oxymoron anyway. There is no freedom from taxes. Start calculating your portion of the national debt and your reduction in earnings through inflation and you'll find you are an indentured servant with no hope of escaping.

I agree there is no escape. At least until the country defaults on its debts and we all start speaking Chinese, then we will really be indentured servants, or dead.

Ok, change the name to whatever you want....Income Tax % Day or whatever.

I always thought if the masses of people had to write out a check the way I do each quarter there would be a complete government overthrow in about 5 days. Or the government would own most everything because of all the assets being seized when people didn't have the money in the checking account to pay up. The "smartest" thing government did was to violate the constitution and force employers to collect these taxes incrementally on their behalf.

I found the poll set up after posting the initial question.

I want to keep the discussion in the percentages category rather than actual dollars to keep from getting too personal. I am just curious if I should be looking for a new accountant!!!

To be perfectly honest, I haven't looked at my taxes in years. My wife started her business so we got an accountant to do both the business and personal taxes. Every September, I fax him a current check stub and he does an estimate so I can adjust my W4 if need be. I'm not one of those people who likes a big check from the government so I try to cut it close. I usually get back less than $500 combined state/federal. I had a lot of unusual situations this year and ended up getting like $2400 Federal but owing state $200. It was weird but OK. Most people don't believe me when I tell them claim "married 6" on my W4. Last year I was as high as 8. I can't complain about too much. I hardly pay any!

If you believe Ron Paul, I got this in my e-mail today.

If calculated to include government spending and the deficit, rather than just collections, Tax Freedom Day would actually fall on May 29.

http://www.house.gov/htbin/blog_inc?BLO ... tail.shtml