Talk:Tax Freedom Day

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Request clarification on tax rates on rich[edit]

This article says "the rich pay a much higher proportion of their income in tax". In contrast, I always hear that wealthy people have various ways to hide their income such as offshore countries or the lower tax-rate on capital gains.

Don't want an edit-war or anything but would like some discussion on this point to ensure NPOV.

EmRick 22:09, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The word trick is "officially considered income". That may leave out an awfully lot of untaxable "income".159.105.80.141 14:30, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If the "average" tax rate is 35%, that means some people pay higher than 35% and some lower than 35%. So, I don't think one could say anything that will be true 100% as there are a lot of variables. That being said, these stats are very interesting: 84.6% of all Federal Taxes are paid by the top 25% of wage earners. Even more telling, the top 1% of wage earners pay about 36.89%. Michaelcox 18:06, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Last August the Criticisms section was was changed to eliminate reference to the differential in tax burdens across income. I am changing it back, as I believe that the statistics cited by Michaelcox are at least roughly accurate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by (talk • contribs) 02:49, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV[edit]

While reading this I noted that the author of the article only gave the opinions of critics of the Tax Freedom Day. I was wondering if anyone could get the people for it?

Criticisms sections[edit]

This section only seemed to apply to the U.S. tax freedom day so I made it a subheading under United States. Christopher Parham 02:03, 2005 May 23 (UTC)

Cost of government[edit]

I removed the phrase that equates the total amount of taxes with "cost of government". While "cost of government" (such as salaries for politicians, maintainance of ministry buildings, paying for blunders any government makes every now and then,, etc), a large part of taxes does not at all contribute to "cost of government", but instead is used for schools, police, national defence, roads, etc.

Of course, the Anarchist POV is that without a government we would not pay taxes at all, so in this sense every tax is caused by the government.

--Aleph4 13:02, 30 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Schools, police, national defense, roads, etc are all services provided by the government. As such, the money spent on them would be part of the "cost of government." 24.214.230.66 (talk) 16:34, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Tax Freedom Day Around the World[edit]

I modified this table to sort based upon the Tax Freedom date instead of alphabetical by country. It gives more information, allowing an easy comparison of Tax Freedom Days (and tax rates) amongst the data set. Given such a small number of countries, it is easy to find the one your interested in without resorting to sorted order. I also fixed a typo on the Australian Day-Count field and tax rate. --VonHammer 14:37, 5 June 2007

That is a bit misleading. The article itself says Due to the different ways that nations collect and categorize public finance data, however, Tax Freedom Days are not comparable from one country to another. --Aleph4 (talk) 12:35, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On that modification, Spain is not correctly sorted. Also, on Uruguay's reference, I could not find the data references. There are two calculations presented for differente types of families, one putting the burden on 35% and the other on 50%. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 164.73.32.12 (talk) 15:19, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Concepts are not subject to copyright[edit]

I don't know what the lede is trying to say, but it is not the case that "the concept" was "copyrighted". Perhaps there is a source that says what sort of protection (if any) was actually sought. 121a0012 (talk) 16:22, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The phrase was trademarked, not copyrighted. The current trademark for the phrase "Tax Freedom Day" is held by the Tax Foundation. See http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=1gmu6p.2.1. I'll change the lede to reflect this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gangstories (talk • contribs) 00:35, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What does "Current TFD development in the World" mean?[edit]

There is a section called Current TFD development in the World that contains a table with no explanation whatsoever. What does this table mean?70.162.56.135 (talk) 08:00, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like that table was added on November 20, 2008 by 87.212.29.150. To me, it looks like a duplicate of the table above it that contains Tax Freedom Day for various countries. My vote is for deletion of the entire section "Current TFD development in the World." Gangstories (talk) 17:55, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hungary tricks this meter[edit]

Hungary tricks this meter

They lower the tax of income but rise the tax of the company pay after their employe income.

This is because of politics, it sounds better but every time the total tax rises.

In Hungary the average salary with tax is 194'500 HUF/month (905 USD) according to Hungarian Central Statistic Institute.

(Which is also false because they get simple average value, not using any statistical methods which means that some people earn over 1'000'000 HUF (4657 USD) and most people earn under 140'000-150'000 HUF (652-699 USD))

For salary of 194'500 HUF (905 USD) the net income for the employe is 120'125 HUF (559 USD).

BUT for 120'125 HUF (559 USD) net income, the company must pay 261'608 HUF (1218 USD).

So Hungary has 117% tax on salary.

After simple subtraction: 261'608 HUF - 120'125 HUF = 141'483 HUF (658 USD) tax/month

For one year: 12 x 141'483 HUF = 1'697'796 HUF (7907 USD) tax

261'608 * 12 / 365 = 3'139'296 HUF / 365 = 8'601 HUF (40 USD) (company pay/day)

1'697'796 / 8'601 HUF = 197 days

So we work 197 days (July 17) for paying the tax and 168 days for our income.

(Which means we work 18% more to pay our governors' luxery and their defaulter companies than to pay our needs. This is very near to truth, most developments of Hungary is paid by the European Union not by our taxes. In every advert of government developments there is small text: "Európai Uniós forrásból" which means "(project) paid by the European Union").

Entrepeneurs and companies have the same rules of tax in Hungary, so for an entrepreneur to get out 120'125 HUF (559 USD) from his business he must pay 141'483 HUF (658 USD) to the government.

(Only exceptions are foreign multinational companies which have contract with the government. They have very reduced taxes for some years and after it expires they change their name and get another years.)

1 U.S. dollar = 214.730513 Hungarian forints

Converted on 2009-05-04 (using Google).

I used Hungarian tax calculator: http://adozona.hu/kalkulator_ber.aspx (hungarian) (adozona=taxzone, kalkulator_ber=calculator_salary) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.182.217.28 (talk) 10:15, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You make some interesting points. However, Wikipedia is not the place to be doing original research like this. If you have valid objections to the way TFD is calculated in Hungary, the proper way to get them included in this article is to first publish your research elsewhere. At that point, it can then be cited as a source by Wikipedia. But it is clearly outside the boundaries of propriety to be working up original research on a talk page, and then citing that as reference material in the article itself. Sorry, but I'm voting to remove your footnote unless you can cite a published source for this argument. Gangstories 09:24, 5 May 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gangstories (talk • contribs)

Dubious[edit]

The history given here contradicts that given by the Adam Smith Institute on their website which goes back to 1929. Also the link to the US patent is broken and I cannot find any third party sources for the main attribution. --BozMo talk 20:58, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The link is to a trademark, not a patent. The reason the link is broken is that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office uses an SQL database that times out users after a certain amount of time has expired since their query. Try searching for "Tax Freedom Day" at this link: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=searchss&state=4004:unant9.1.1 Also, the Adam Smith Institute was only founded in 1977, some 40 years after the Tax Foundation and nearly 30 years after the original Tax Freedom Day calculation was begun by Dallas Hostetler in the USA. It does not "go back to" 1929 as you claim. Please clarify. (Gangstories 09:41, 28 December 2009 (UTC))

Criticism[edit]

It's mentioned under "Criticism" that a mortgage is a voluntary contract while taxation is involuntary. I would counter that taxation is not entirely involuntary - you can choose to stop paying taxes in a particular country by moving to a different country.

64.20.202.42 (talk) 22:38, 11 May 2010 (UTC)Sean P. Duross[reply]

I guess being the victim of gang warfare is thus voluntary as well? You can choose to stop being a victim of gang warfare in a particular neighborhood by moving to a different neighborhood. 71.167.144.32 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:00, 9 February 2011 (UTC).[reply]