Due to work, travel, and other issues, TPOL missed National Tax Day. But we can’t totally ignore the horrible status of tolerating evils like taxation.

This meme was very recently posted. We think it is a legitimate question. Dear readers, do you agree?

Is this not criminal? Morally if not legally? Even worse is the distribution:

As someone pointed out with this chart, we don’t have a tax fairness problem (at least not from the point of view of Populists and those who claim to be the vanguard of the poor people). We have a spending problem. You can see this in the State tax burdens.

Now consider this recently published map:

We point out that this does not include any direct federal taxes: income (individual or corporate) or excise (on booze, fuel, lubricants, tires, etc.). Just what State and local governments rip off people who live, travel through, shop, or work in their jurisdiction.

We admit to being surprised that New Mexico is the third worst (after Hawai’i and New York State). Which, admittedly, is probably skewed by New York City. For us at TPOL, we are pleased to see that South Dakota is tied for fourth best (together with New Hampshire) and just after Alaska, Tennessee and Delaware. (And are proud for a friend/correspondent who helped, years ago, to eliminate the income tax in Tennessee and also overall lower taxes.)

It is interesting to see that except for a few outliers in the East (and of course, Alaska), the bite of State and local taxes is quite a bit less in the northern part of “flyover country” – but we will tell you that taxes are still way too high, and the waste of money is just as high in those States that are under 8%.

And remember:

Now, since Uncle Milty is not a modern guy, we’ll also quote someone else:

We will look at more tax issues from a libertarian and christian point of view in future commentaries.