Rejoice, ye tax-bound Arkansans. By Tuesday, you will be free at last!
Tuesday marks Arkansas' Tax Freedom Day. This is the day you will have collectively earned enough money to pay what you owe the feds, the state and the locals in taxes, according to the Tax Foundation, an independent tax policy research organization.
Arkansas, sadly so often 49th or 50th in everything good, will be the 13th state to reach Tax Freedom Day this year. And Arkansas will celebrate this momentous occasion 10 days before the national Tax Freedom Day on April 24 ... 114 days into the year and nine days after the tax filing deadline, the Tax Foundation points out.
Tax Freedom Day takes all federal, state, and local taxes and divides them by the nation's income. This year Americans will pay $3.28 trillion in federal taxes and $1.57 trillion in state and local taxes, for a total tax bill of $4.85 trillion, or 31 percent of national income.
Why aren't we celebrating state and national Tax Freedom Day?
We celebrate everything else. Even the nonreligious holidays have grown to the point where some type of seasonal merchandise can be found in stores year-round. (Hey! Any of those chocolate-peanut butter Easter eggs still on clearance anywhere?)
If there's ever a day we ought to be celebrating, it's Tax Freedom Day. Yes, there's the less than festive fact that it took us this far into the year to pay off our taxes -- 114 days into the year, if you go by the national date. Granted, those of us who will have a tax bill this year may find it difficult to feel any sense of tax freedom, let alone feel it so close to tax filing deadline. And true, there's that whole national debt thing and the various debates over how wisely our tax money is spent.
Shake off the negativity, I urge you. Embrace this chance to be free!
And don't be surprised if someday soon, the merchants will be urging you to celebrate too. They'll be more than happy to stand by and take your almost-tax-free money in exchange for various celebratory paraphernalia:
• Tax Freedom Day party merchandise -- plates, cups, streamers, napkins and the like.
• Tax Freedom Day cards. Picture a card bearing stern, neatly suited Internal Revenue Service folks or tax lawyers. Open it and they're all disheveled, dancing with each other and swinging from the chandelier. The hokey copy: "Your dishes are washed/Your bed is made/But to heck with all that/Your taxes are paid! Happy Tax Freedom Day!"
• Tax Freedom Day sales. "Now that you've worked long enough to pay off your 2015 taxes, how about a new (fill in the blank) that'll allow you to go play?"
• Ugly Tax Freedom Day T-shirts whose wearers compete for prizes at Tax Freedom Day parties.
• An Uncle Sam or IRS character as the Santa or the Easter Bunny of the season, with chances for the little ones to take pictures with him at the mall.
• Tax Freedom Day home and yard decor, complete with figurines breaking free of chains marked "tax" or being led from dungeons labeled thusly.
• Tax Freedom Day filled-piggy-bank hunts.
• A Tax Freedom Day off-day. Well, they might want to schedule it the day after. Don't want to prolong the debt payoff.
Here's my ultimate suggestion on how to really get us taxpayers to feel the freedom on Tax Freedom Day ... No more taxes of any kind for the rest of the year. Sales tax, personal property tax and all other taxes that become due and payable after Tax Freedom Day? Poof.
But I can already see some Pyrrhic-victory scenarios. They'd heap us with an unrealistic tax burden between Jan. 1 and Tax Freedom Day, which would cause it to come later. Or we'd end up paying $45 for heads of lettuce, $80,000 for compact cars and $500,000 for raggedy starter homes on the other side of the tracks. And unlike that federal-spending scandal of the 1980s, it wouldn't be just the military paying $640 for toilet seats this time.
Guess we'd best just be satisfied that we're paying off our 2015 taxes faster than we did in 2000, when Tax Freedom Day fell on May 1, according to foundation data. And even though Jan. 22 would be a nice, quick Tax Freedom Day, I wouldn't want to go back to the year 1900 to enjoy it.
Give me email or give me -- uh -- just give me email:
hwilliams@arkansasonline.com
Style on 04/12/2015