If you were to designate all of your income to your taxes (federal, state, and local) starting with January 1, New Jersey residents would have to keep doing so until May 10, a good ten days after the national average.
MSN Money has an article including a table with the Tax Freedom Days for each state. But not everyone thinks this calculation is valid.
The [Tax Foundation] uses the mathematical average: total wages divided by total taxes. But [The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities] argues that because the tax system is progressive, people with higher incomes pay a greater percentage of their incomes in taxes. Though the media often refers to Tax Freedom Day as the date when the average American has “finished” working for the government, the think tank says families in the middle of the income spectrum work 40% fewer days than the Tax Freedom Day “average.”
Whenever you start to talk about taxes, it’s inevitable that politics come into play. Everyone has an agenda.
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4:38 pm (reply)
I think there may be some validity to this argument from the perspective of how to make statistics lie.
I would be more interested to see where the median household falls with respect to tax freedom day.
1:43 am (reply)
I don’t think most people are aware of Tax Freedom Day. When you look at it from the perspective that we work the first four months of the year just to pay taxes it makes you want to find every little tax deduction you can!