Happy Income Tax Day. If you work for a living, that’s a
joke.
It feels odd to be writing the majority report, but the studies
are consistent: Americans hate paying taxes. A recent AP poll found
that 70 percent of us think federal income taxes are too
complicated.
Happy Income Tax Day. If you work for a living, that’s a joke.
It feels odd to be writing the majority report, but the studies are consistent: Americans hate paying taxes. A recent AP poll found that 70 percent of us think federal income taxes are too complicated. We are evenly divided on whether we would rather go to the dentist (49 percent) or do our taxes (48 percent.)
Nearly a third of us put off doing our taxes until the final weeks before the April 15 deadline. Another 9 million Americans will file an extension and send their taxes in late. The post office will have extended hours on April 15 to accommodate all of us who wait till the last minute.
I do my taxes in February, not through any innate sense of order or timeliness, and certainly not because of a patriotic desire to enrich the U.S. Treasury, but because I have two kids in college. Therefore I have to file a FAFSA by March 2, in order to qualify for a CalGrant, which we have never managed to qualify for, but the raw numbers look as though we should, so I keep applying. And to file the FAFSA, I need to complete our 1040, so the domino effect means I have our taxes completed by March 2.
But not mailed. Oh, no. Completed, signed, copied, checks made out, in envelopes, but not mailed. I keep the actual funds in our account until this week.
The good news is that Tax Freedom Day is just around the corner: Sunday, April 17 will be American Tax Freedom Day, the day when Americans stop working to pay their taxes and begin working to feed and clothe themselves.
California Tax Freedom Day arrives later, April 20, this year. This is partly because California has a greater tax burden than most other states, and partly because incomes tend to be higher here, which makes income taxes commensurately higher.
Tax Freedom Day is calculated annually by the Tax Foundation. They divide total taxes collected in the USA by the total income, to determine what percent of our income goes to pay for government: 29.1 percent this year. It came latest, on May 3, in 2000, when the bubble pushed incomes to record heights. The federal government has cut taxes every year since to give us this earlier date, and I am grateful.
Grateful, but not content. As matters stand, the average American works 70 days to pay for his federal taxes, then 37 more days to pay his state and local taxes. He works 65 days to pay for his housing and household expenses, 52 days for health and medical expenses, 31 days to buy food, another 31 days to pay for his transportation. The average American then spends the proceeds from 22 days of work on recreation, 13 days on clothing, 2 days on savings, and has 42 days of pay left to fritter.
Looking at my property tax bill with April 15 in mind, I notice that I pay $42.60 to the water district for clean and safe creeks. I pay $5.08 to the county for vector control: that’s disease vectors, as in rats and mosquitoes. I pay $16.60 to the water district for flood control, and $33.60 for the county library. This is on top of the county taxes I pay that support the library, including a .24 percent of my property assessed value for the county library retirement fund.
It’s like being nibbled to death by ducks.
I can’t do anything about most of these taxes; as Mark Twain noted, they are as inevitable as death. But I can oppose the $5 per car VLF increase that good old boy Joe Simitian asked good old boy Don Gage to ask good old boy Charlie Morales to ask the city council to re-impose on us.
And I can vote no on Measure A and wipe that $33.60 off my next year’s property tax bill, and no on Measure B, so I don’t have to add another $12 to it. Every little bit helps bring Tax Freedom Day minutes, even hours closer.
Cynthia Anne Walker is a
homeschooling mother of three and former engineer. She is a
published independent author. Her column is published in
The Dispatch every Friday.
