Liberate Ga. taxpayers and rein in spending

Tax day may have come and gone, but it isn’t too early for Georgians to start thinking about their 2016 tax burden. I suggest looking at in a different framework. Instead of simply looking at how much you owe, try calculating how long it will take you to earn enough to pay it off.

The answer is depressing. This year, that day happened to fall on April 15, by sheer coincidence. The non-partisan Tax Foundation has dubbed this holiday “Tax Freedom Day.”

But there’s nothing worth celebrating when it comes to Georgia’s and America’s tax burden. This year, it took more than 100 days before the money you earned was truly yours. That’s roughly a third of your income that never made it into your pocket. In fact, you likely spent more on taxes than you will all year on food, clothing, and housing combined.

It could be worse. It could also be much better. Compared to the rest of the country, Georgia was in the middle of the pack. The earliest Tax Freedom Day was in Louisiana, where taxpayers are liberated after April 2nd. Connecticut residents aren’t done working to pay their taxes until May 13th.

But no matter where you live, this day gets later every year. Tax Freedom Day 2015 was three days later than it was last year, and that was three days later than the year before. This trend shows no sign of stopping.

This hurts your local economy. When Tax Freedom Day gets later, it means that you and other hard-working Georgians have less money to spend, save and invest in your own community. Instead, the money goes to politicians in Washington and Atlanta who’ve never missed a chance to spend someone else’s cash.

And their spending addiction is getting worse. Americans are expected to pay a total of $4.85 trillion in taxes in 2015, $350 billion more than last year. About $1.5 trillion is divvied up among local governments and the 50 states. Washington gets the other $3.3 trillion, the most ever collected by the IRS.

Yet it’s still not enough to pay for Washington’s spending bonanza. This year, the federal government is expected to run a nearly $500 billion deficit, 47 percent higher than the deficit a decade ago. This helps explain why the national debt has more than doubled from nearly $8 trillion to over $18 trillion in the past 10 years.

That’s money that you and I are going to have to pay back. In fact, if we were paying enough to take care of the entire national debt, every American would have to forego his or her income for more than a year.

Which leads us to the most depressing fact of all. Most politicians want to add even more to this mounting pile of debt.

In the coming weeks and months, Georgia’s representatives in Congress will debate federal spending for fiscal year 2016. At stake are the modest budget levels that bipartisan majorities passed in 2011. Four years ago, both parties agreed to pass the Budget Control Act, which raised the debt limit in exchange for modest spending limits.