Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Jonathan Newman
“Tax Freedom Day, calculated by the Tax Foundation, ‘represents how long Americans as a whole have to work in order to pay the nation’s tax burden.’ It appears that they stopped publishing this in 2019, but others have picked up where they left off. The idea is that the income earned by taxpayers over a certain proportion of the year goes to Uncle Sam. In 2025, that date was April 16th. But the burden of government is much larger than the amount we pay in taxes. The government spends much more than it collects in taxes, diverting valuable resources away from where they would be used in the private market economy, subject to the profit and loss test of the market. The difference is made up by new government debt.” (04/15/26)
https://mises.org/power-market/tax-freedom-day-underestimates-how-long-you-work-government