Happy Tax Day!

April 15, 2025—Tax Day. A day when Americans begrudgingly file their returns, sending hard-earned money to a government that produces nothing without first taking from others. Let’s “celebrate” by exposing taxation for what it is: theft dressed up as civic duty. As Ronald Reagan quipped, “Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

Every year, the Tax Foundation calculates Tax Freedom Day—the date until which Americans work to pay off their federal, state, and local tax burdens. In 2025, Tax Freedom Day is estimated to fall around April 22. That means you toil for nearly a third of the year—112 days—just to fund the government before keeping a dime for yourself. For high earners or those in high-tax states, it can stretch even later, sometimes into May. Imagine: months of your labor confiscated before you see the rewards of your industry. As Calvin Coolidge said, “I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom.”

Taxation in the United States wasn’t always the behemoth it is today. The federal income tax as we know it began with the 16th Amendment in 1913, which allowed Congress to tax incomes “from whatever source derived.” The initial promise was modest: the Revenue Act of 1913 imposed a 1% tax on incomes above $3,000 (about $90,000 today) for individuals, with a maximum rate of 7% for incomes over $500,000 (roughly $15 million today). It applied to less than 1% of the population—only the wealthiest. Lawmakers assured Americans it would stay limited, a tool to fund essential services without burdening the masses.

That promise didn’t last long. By 1918, during World War I, the top rate skyrocketed to 77% to fund the war effort. The threshold for taxation dropped, pulling more Americans into the net. After the war, rates fluctuated but never returned to their original modesty. By World War II, the government introduced payroll withholding, normalizing the idea of Uncle Sam dipping into your paycheck before you even see it.

Today, the top federal income tax rate is 37%, with additional state taxes in many areas, and the tax code spans over 70,000 pages. Barry Goldwater nailed it: “The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.” What started as a tax on the elite became a system ensnaring nearly everyone, funding not just roads but bloated bureaucracies and vote-buying schemes.

The government doesn’t generate wealth—it takes it. Every dollar spent on a bridge, a welfare program, or a politician’s pet project comes from someone’s labor. Thomas Sowell put it bluntly: “Someone once said that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. That may have been true when he said it, but today taxes are mostly the price we pay so that politicians can play Santa Claus and get reelected.” The federal budget for 2025 is projected to exceed $6.5 trillion, much of it on programs far beyond the government’s original constitutional limits. Yet politicians keep spending, taxing, and borrowing, leaving future generations to foot the bill.

Milton Friedman saw through the tax charade: “I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. The reason is that I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending.” Taxes are just the symptom; runaway spending is the disease. In 2024, the national debt surpassed $34 trillion, with interest payments alone costing over $800 billion annually—more than the defense budget. Every tax dollar funneled into servicing debt or redundant programs is a dollar stolen from productive use. Winston Churchill’s analogy rings true: “We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

Tax Day isn’t a celebration—it’s a reminder of how much we’ve surrendered. The government thrives by taking what you earn, often wasting it on inefficiency or political games. It’s time to demand better: lower taxes, restrained spending, and a return to the principle that your labor belongs to you. Let’s honor Coolidge’s vision of freedom and reject the notion that we exist to fund the state’s excesses. Taxation may be inevitable, but its current scale is nothing short of theft.