Countdown to Tax Freedom Day

Editor's note: As a special feature for March, TheStreet.com is offering an ongoing series on everything you need to know about taxes. Today is part 15.

Here's something to cheer you up: This year you're working longer to pay your taxes. And only four other times in the past 25 years have you worked more for the government than this year.

At least that is according to the folks at the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan group promoting tax education that annually calculates Tax Freedom Day.

Not to be confused with the day when everyone is free from paying taxes -- the day we die -- Tax Freedom Day marks the calendar day when the average American has worked long enough to have paid off his or her federal taxes for the year.

This year, that day is April 30. That is two days later than last year, and the latest the day has arrived since 2001.

"The economy has been growing at a good clip since mid-2003, and those growing incomes are pushing people into higher tax brackets," says Scott Hodge, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation.

"When that happens, tax collections grow faster than incomes."

According to Hodge, we shouldn't be surprised that the day we stop paying for Uncle Sam has been arriving later each of the past four years. There haven't been any major federal tax cuts since 2003, during which time the economy has been steadily growing.

And the national tax burden tends to increase with income as Americans are pushed into higher brackets.

Longer and Longer Tax Freedom Day is arriving later this year

Source: Tax Foundation

Calculating Tax Freedom

The idea of Tax Freedom Day was first conceived by Florida businessman Dallas Hostetler in 1948. "He was frustrated that people in Florida had no income taxes, but there were a lot of business taxes," says Bill Ahern, communications director for the Tax Foundation. "He wanted to show that it falls on individuals in a different way."