Today is Tax Freedom Day!
On April 24, 2015, at 3:36AM, the average U.S. taxpayer finally worked long enough this year, to have earned enough to pay his taxes for the year.
Tax Freedom Day the day when the average U.S. taxpayer has finally earned enough to pay his taxes for the year. Each year, the Tax Foundation gathers massive amounts of government tax data and from that data, calculates what portion of our income we pay in taxes and how many days the average taxpayer will have to work to pay his taxes. They then count that many days into the year and that day is Tax Freedom Day. This year, that day is April 24.
We actually take it a step further, with our Tax Freedom Clock. We use the Tax Foundation report to calculate the exact second of Tax Freedom. The Tax Foundation has calculated that in 2015, Americans will pay 31.0% of their total income in taxes. Using that number, we calculated that the exact moment of Tax Freedom occurred at 3:36AM this morning.
The Tax Freedom Clock was updated to this date and time on March 31, when the Tax Foundation announced the 2015 Tax Freedom Day. This clock counts down from the beginning of the year, to Tax Freedom (second). Then, it begins counting up, to inform the user how long he has been working for himself. At the end of the year, the clock resets and begins counting down to Tax Freedom again, using the prior year’s date and time, until such time as the new Tax Foundation report is issued.
The Tax Freedom Clock is a Flash applet, so it should work on any web site or blog that allows web widgets (object code or embed code) and display properly on all modern browsers.
Sorry, but Flash doesn’t work on iPhones or iPads. We have considered developing an iOS app and it still may happen in the future. But we are busy preparing a 2nd edition to “The Rich Don’t Pay Tax! …Or Do They?”, finishing up another book, “The Tax Deception”, for publication this summer, and simultaneously preparing speeches to be presented at several large political conventions this summer.
Allegiance Books encourages you to share this widget with your friends, by placing it on your own web site, on social networking sites and in the signature area of your various forum postings.
There are two ways to place this widget on a web page. The most common is the “object” code version. But we also include the “embed” code version, in the event that the object code version doesn’t work on a particular site. Please note that some blogs and forums may not allow either “object” or “embed” code. In fact, embedding a widget on a Facebook page requires a special app. But in general, you’ll probably find that Flash web widgets are accepted on a wide variety of social forums.
Of course, if it’s your own site, then either of the methods of embedding the widget should work.
To share this widget with others, just select all of the text in one of the following boxes and copy it (Ctrl–C on a PC or Cmd–C on a Mac). Then, paste it into the HTML code of your web site, blog or forum posting (Ctrl–V on a PC or Cmd–V on a Mac), where you want the Tax Freedom Day Clock to appear on that page. Look for a button on forums that say something like “HTML” or “CODE”, to get to the point where you can paste this code into the page. That’s all there is to it.
>> Use just one of the following… not both. <<
This is the “object” code version that is most widely allowed on forum postings.
For those sites that do not allow “object” code, you might try the following “embed” code.
The underlying data that makes the US Tax Freedom Clock possible comes from annual calculations by the non-partisan Tax Foundation, who are the official keepers of the US Tax Freedom Day.
The Tax Foundation uses the most unbiased method possible for calculating the national Tax Freedom Day. As you can see below, it is very straight forward:
Dividing the total of federal, state and local taxes, by the total income of all Americans, gives us the percentage of our annual income that goes to taxes and likewise the percentage of the year that we have to work for the government to pay those taxes. Take that percentage and multiply it by the number of days in the year and you know how many days you have to work to pay your taxes for that year.
In the past, some people have suggested that Tax Freedom Day is not really representative of most working Americans, since it is skewed by the the large amount of taxes paid by the very rich. They try to spin the story that that the average taxpayer doesn’t really work that long, by ignoring other even more significant facts. But that’s all their argument is – spin. It has no basis in fact.
You see, like most spin, their argument focuses on just one point that is part of a much larger picture and, by itself, would tend to support their position. But in order to make their spin work, they completely ignore the fact that, according to the bi-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation, roughly half of Americans don’t earn enough to have any tax liability. It should be noted that those who pay zero federal income tax also pay very little of any other taxes. They want us to forget that important fact, because they know that it more than offsets the effect of a handful of the rich paying huge amounts of tax. In the end, Tax Freedom Day is very representative of the average working American and may actually be skewed ever so slightly toward lower-income taxpayers. Because of this, there is a very good likelihood that your personal tax freedom day could be later than the one calculated by the Tax Foundation.
We hope that you will use the Tax Freedom Day Clock web widget on your site and tell others about it, to help emphasize how much of our work actually benefits the government and not those of us who worked to earn that money.
Please visit the Tax Foundation for more information on Tax Freedom Day.
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