For Immediate Release
U.S. Senator Scott Brown’s new radio report notes his ongoing opposition
to higher taxes as he cites the Washington-based Tax Foundation
calculation that last year, we worked until April 12 to pay off our tax
bill. Only after that did we start working for ourselves.
Well, that was last year. The Tax Foundation has just released its
2012 Tax Freedom Day® report, in which we learn that American
taxpayers are working this year until April 17 to pay off our tax bill.
(In Massachusetts, because our state and local taxes are high, we work
entirely for government until April 22).
The Tax Foundation says the extra four days is the result of “higher
federal income and corporate tax collections” and notes that if the
federal government raised enough to close the budget deficit, Tax
Freedom Day would come on May 14. It doesn’t say, though we can
estimate, that if we were taxed enough to pay off the national debt,
we’d have no money for ourselves at all and still be in debt.
Since that’s not a viable plan, all this spending, borrowing and future
taxation becomes the problem of our grandchildren, which is one reason
Tea Party activists have rallied on Patriots Day since 2009.
Citizens for Limited Taxation has been teapartying since we were founded
in 1974 to fight the graduated income tax. Our Associate Director Chip
Faulkner was one of the speakers at the first Tea Party Patriot Day
event on Boston Common, and represented us at the Greater Boston Tea
Party there in 2010 and 2011.
Unfortunately, the Boston Common venue was grabbed by another group as
the GBTP waited for its annual permit, so Faulkner and the GBTP will be
joining the Worcester Tea Party and other fiscal-conservative
teapartiers in Worcester at Lincoln Square between 2-4 pm on Sunday,
April 15. All taxpayers are
welcome to join them there to celebrate
both Patriots Day and Tax Freedom Day.
We expect to hear from opponents that “taxes are the price we pay for a
civilized society” so we’ll take this opportunity to remind everyone
that when Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said this in 1904, there was
no federal income tax, and Tax Freedom Day back then was January
21. The national debt – now almost $16 trillion – was $26 billion in
1904.
America badly needs the Tea Party to help restore civilization; we hope
its fiscal conservatives can prevail with the fiscal issues on which
most Americans can agree come November.
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Citizens for Limited Taxation ▪ PO
Box 1147 ▪ Marblehead, MA 01945
▪ 508-915-3665