Today is “Tax Freedom Day.”  It’s the conservative day to remind all Americans exactly how much they pay in taxes.  They say if you work from January 1st until today all of that money goes to the government in taxes and from this day forward for the rest of the year you can keep your money.  It’s an estimate of the amount of “slavery” or “involuntary servitude” Americans face through government.

Of course, all of this ignores the fact that the U.S. has one of the lowest tax rates of the industrialized world.  We rank 5th lowest for tax revenues as a share of GDP.  In fact, taxes have remained stable since the 1950s and have decreased during most of the last 100 years.  Corporate and excise taxes have actually gone down.

Maybe all of the anger is directed because the U.S. redistributes American wealth as they claim?  Not really.  The U.S. is the least redistributive first world nation.  The U.S. actually offers some of the best government services in the world, for some of the least amount of taxes.  It’s not common to hear that the American government is incredibly efficient compared to other similar nations.

Conservatives harp on the amount that our government spends, but they don’t focus on how little our tax burden actually is compared to other similar countries.  They also tend to ignore the fact that nothing new has dramatically changed in our taxation.  It’s easy to complain about taxation, but our government provides valuable services for an incredibly inexpensive cost.

People often talk about how our country is attempting to redistribute wealth, but people seem to ignore that the wealthiest individuals are being taxed substantially less now than during most of this country’s recent history.  From 1917 until now we have had tax rates for the highest incomes groups up to 92% of their income.  That rate was not for just a few years.  In 1917 the tax rate was 67% for this group and it was still 70% in 1980.  From 1950 to 1963 the tax rate was 91% (92% in 1952 and 1952).  During the Reagan presidency the tax rate topped out at 69.13%.  The top tax rate in 2010 was 35%.  The lowest tax rate during the last 90 years was 24% in 1929, the year the Great Depression began.  So why are people concerned that the wealthiest Americans are getting taxed too much when they are being taxed at the historic low that they are now?

Chart From http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213