When you see the taxes taken out of your paycheck, do you feel like you’re working for the government? Well, you should.
Tax Freedom Day, the day when the average American has earned enough money to pay all the federal, state and local taxes he or she owes to the government, falls on April 18 this year. That means the typical worker will spend 107 days working for the government in 2013.
The Tax Foundation, a D.C.-based think tank that publishes the annual Tax Freedom Day study, found that Tax Freedom Day comes five days later this year than in 2012, due “mainly to the fiscal cliff deal that raised federal taxes on individual income and payroll. Additionally, the Affordable Care Act’s investment tax and excise tax went into effect.”
“In 2013, Americans will pay $2.76 trillion in federal taxes and $1.45 trillion in state taxes, for a total tax bill of $4.22 trillion, or 29.4 percent of income,” according to the Tax Foundation’s website.
For Times Free Press readers, the news is a little better. That’s because the states in this area, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and, especially, Tennessee, have lower state and local tax burdens, driving our personal Tax Freedom Days earlier than most of the rest of the country.