Tax Foundation

CHEW ON THIS: Our "leaders" in Harrisburg are considering taxing gum, candy, chewing tobacco, stogies and more. Like what? Well, how about basic-cable TV, ATM transactions, legal services or any of a host of things currently tax-exempt such as toothbrushes, flags, twine, airline food, dry cleaning, sports tickets or (gag) newspapers? I'm not saying that this is going to happen. I'm saying that those fiddling with the stalled budget - the seventh in a row, now 57 days late - say that they're looking at all options to help close a $3 billion-plus deficit.

To local fans they might be the "Damn Yankees," but to Harrisburg and City Hall, the Phillies couldn't have hosted better guests than the likes of Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and Mark Teixeira. And to Eagles loyalists, the Washington Redskins might be bumbling division rivals who at the very least deserved to lose, but state and city tax collectors saw a welcome shade of green in those burgundy uniforms. That's because the New York Yankees, just by spending an autumn weekend in Philadelphia, probably chipped in well over $300,000 to the state and city treasuries in the form of income taxes.

By R.D. Norton The late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman liked to point out that when it comes to the size of government, it's not how much revenue it collects that matters most, but how much it spends. If you cut taxes by half but don't reduce spending, you haven't done anything to shrink the size of government. All you've done is shift the burden to future generations. Every April, the Tax Foundation announces the arrival of Tax Freedom Day. The idea is that this is the day of the year when Americans are "free" of the burden of taxation, assuming every penny earned before that date is used to pay federal, state, and local taxes.

May 3 is Tax Freedom Day for the nation as a whole, according to a new report from the Washington-based Tax Foundation. That's when we stop working to pay local, state, and federal government and start working for ourselves. The federal tax burden has grown by 14 days' pay between 1992 and 2001, even though President Clinton declared that "the era of big government is over. " In contrast, state and local tax burdens have remained virtually unchanged during that period. The burden of government has expanded by two days from last year and now stands at the highest level since World War II. Taxes take 35 percent of a worker's gross income - 24 percent for federal taxes and 11 percent for state and local.

The late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman liked to point out that when it comes to the size of government, it's not how much revenue it collects that matters most, but how much it spends. If you cut taxes by half but don't reduce spending, you haven't done anything to shrink the size of government. All you've done is shift the burden to future generations. Every April, the Tax Foundation announces the arrival of Tax Freedom Day. The idea is that this is the day of the year when Americans are "free" of the burden of taxation, assuming every penny earned before that date is used to pay federal, state, and local taxes.

By Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan Each July Fourth, Americans celebrate their freedom, the result of a revolution over "taxation without representation. " This month, we celebrate another type of freedom - from our own tax man. It turns out that taxation with representation is no picnic either. According to the Tax Foundation, Tax Freedom Day - the day on which the average American has earned enough money to pay off his federal, state, and local tax bills for the year - occurs on Thursday.

Two years ago at a Texas convention, the president of a large petroleum company walked up to me and said, "I just bought gasoline for 68 cents a gallon. " I asked him how he managed to get such a great price. "That's the cost before taxes are added," he said. As fuel prices rise, pushing, even passing, $2 a gallon in parts of California, politicians blame production cutbacks by Arab nations. But the primary culprits are taxes, a refusal to exploit oil sources on U.S. territory for fear of a backlash from environmentalists, and what looks suspiciously like a deal among politicians, American oil companies and Arab oil-producing states.

Camden County Republicans know they are facing an uphill battle in the First Congressional District - a traditionally Democratic area that incumbent U.S. Rep. Robert E. Andrews has dominated since 1990. But that is not deterring GOP candidate Ron Richards, who is aggressively campaigning to unseat the four-term congressman in a district that spans portions of Camden, Burlington, and Gloucester Counties. Richards, 50, marketing manager for a software firm and a member of the Voorhees Township Committee, is painting Andrews as a "professional politician" who is robbing the district.

Government workers, especially here in Philadelphia, get lots of holidays that ordinary taxpayers don't get. To balance things out a bit, I propose a new holiday called Tax Freedom Day, which is to be celebrated by any person who doesn't work for a government entity, does pay taxes on time, but is super-rich and therefore doesn't worry about taxes. Picking the day to celebrate this new holiday will be a bit tricky. Last year, for instance, it would have been April 30. Thanks largely to Gov. Casey's $3 billion tax increase, Pennsylvanians can't celebrate until tomorrow - May 6. According to the Tax Foundation in Washington, that's the day average Pennsylvanians finally start working to feed themselves and their families instead of slaving away to feed the insatiable tax appetite of monsters called federal, state and local governments.

By proposing more Band-Aids for a festering wound, State Sen. John Adler's "modest tax proposal" of a constitutional convention would not solve the New Jersey property-tax quagmire. The average property tax on residences in New Jersey exceeds $4,000 a year, the highest rate of any state. The tax burden increasingly threatens residents' economic well-being. According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, the per-capita New Jersey state and local tax burden for 2002 was $4,146, or 10.3 percent of the state's $40,258 per-capita income.