Your Actual Taxes

Total Tax Burden

The Total US Tax Burden, according to Forbes for 2004 as a percentage of Gross Domestic Production was 25.5%

Our personal total tax burdens are much higher than that. Our Federal income tax burden alone for most of my working years was about 25%

But I paid many other taxes from my income. Here are just a few with my estimate of the percentage of my income.

Social Security Tax (6.2% of your pay and 6.2% by your employer of pay that could have been yours)

Medicare Tax (1.45% of your pay and 1.45% by your employer of pay that could have been yours)

State Income tax (10%)

Real Property tax (.5%)

Personal property tax (Auto, tools, appliances, RV’s

Federal Excise tax, (handguns (10% of sale price) rifles and ammo (11% of sale price) tires, fishing and archery equipment)

Federal Gas tax (18.4¢ per gallon-¢pg)

State Excise Tax;

Tobacco Tax (cigarettes 87¢ per pack, other tobacco 33.02 percent),

Alcohol Tax ($3.30 per gallon distilled <100 proof, 20¢ per gallon beer and wine),

Nature Gas, Emergency phone and Energy resources surcharges Container recycling fee CRV (5¢ per bottle< 24 oz, 10¢ ≥24oz.)

Tire fee

State Gas Tax (35.3 ¢pg, 47.7 ¢pg counting other taxes and fees, 10 cents higher for diesel)

State Sales Tax (8.75%)

Federal tobacco Tax (small cigs and small cigars $1.01/20, large cigs $2.11/20, large cigars 40¢ each)

Federal Liquor Tax (distilled $13.50/proof gallon, beer $18/barrel 5¢/can, wine $1.7/gallon)

Licenses, (vehicle, bedding, hunting and fishing permits,)

Fees () Required Insurances () Required Safety Equipment

Luxury Car Tax, originally only on certain cars over $40,000, now many cars and trucks cost over that, so luxury tax applies to pick up trucks.

In the purchase price of many necessary commodities are the taxes, licenses, fees, and regulatory costs levied on businesses, but paid for by consumers. Here are just a few with my estimate of the percentage of purchase price that was tax and regulatory burden.

Fuel and food; some foods use fuel many times before they reach the consumers table. A 10% fuel tax can increase food costs by 70%. For some foods fuel is used to till the fields, kill the weeds and bugs, fertilize a couple times, harvest, haul to market, haul to storage, haul to processing, haul to warehousing, haul to retailing, and hauled home by the consumer, all using fuel.

Regulation, Product liability insurance, fees, surcharges, environment requirements, licenses and permits to the extent they are excessive they add 30 to 50 percent unnecessarily to the cost of everything.

Each year we spent about 15% of net income on commodities, about $15,000.00 annually.

Vehicle and transportation taxes and regulation burden; we averaged about $22,000.00 per year in transportation costs.

Real Estate taxes; we averaged about half of one percent of our income because of Prop 13 in California. Had we sold our original home from 37 years ago and moved elsewhere in California our property tax could have easily been two to five percent of income yearly. Many homebuyers pay:

$5,000.00 per year in property related taxes.

I think our effective tax rate including regulatory costs, mandates and fees, direct and indirectly passed along in product and service prices is about;


75% of your income!!! Are you getting your moneys worth? I doubt it.

Incidentally, this doesn’t include the cost of eroding the value of your savings and investment through intentionally induced inflation. Our money has been reduced in value by about 90% since 1960. That’s right; a dollar today is worth about 10¢ in 1960 money.

Think about that when you cash your government check.