It’s the day Americans most feel the burden of the government they’ve elected — not just in seeing what Uncle Sam is taking this year, and what they must fork over in other income taxes, but in sweating out the forms.
Forms no one really understands.
It’s a proven fact that five different professional tax preparers — even different IRS experts — will wind up with five very different bottom-line tax payments for the same middle-class family.
The code is that complex. In effect, that arbitrary.
And this bitter truth comes on top of the obscene amounts our government takes.
The Tax Foundation’s gauge is Tax Freedom Day — when the nation as a whole has earned enough to pay its total bill: federal, state and local taxes, divided by total income.
Tax Freedom Day this year doesn’t come until April 24 — a day later than last year.
In high-tax states, it’s worse. New York’s Tax Freedom Day is May 8. Only New Jersey and Connecticut are worse, tied at May 13.
Nor does any of that account for the “final tax”: the amount of time and sweat sucked up by that 1040. The Web site Wallethub notes that, even in this era of software like Turbo Tax, the average American still spends an average of 16 hours finishing and filing the damned return.
And then sends it off with a prayer that some IRS clerk won’t find fault with an honest effort.
Stressed-out Americans have every right to wonder what century they’re living in: The United Nations banned indentured servitude back in 1948.
Yet tonight millions of citizens still face hours more unpaid labor, scrambling to jump through The Man’s hoops before midnight — and so win a 12-month reprieve before the ordeal begins anew next year.