So what's the controversy here? It says right there on the website (http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxfreedomday/) that it's "calculated by dividing the official government tally of all taxes collected in each year by the official government tally of all income earned in each year." How stupid do you have to be to not understand what that means, mathematically?

Representing the ratio of tax receipts to GDP as a calendar date is silly and misleading, and has little to do with how much an average or median American has to work to cover their taxes, which is what the media stupidly presents it as.

or the additional costs imposed by regulations

If we include this magic number, we should surely include the additional costs imposed by lack of regulations.

Again, though, the figure does not represent just federal income tax. It also includes, FICA, Medicare, state income taxes, local income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and excise taxes.

It's unclear to me whether it also includes the passed-on cost of corporate taxes paid by consumers or the additional costs imposed by regulations. Reading the report, it does not look like it does.

Indeed, 32 percent may well be low in expressing the true "cost of government."

I would like to know what % of tax the libertarian minded think is acceptable?

I'm working on a construction site right now. Without OSHA, it would certainly be a lot more "interesting" without the safety belts, railings on scaffolding, GFI circuit breakers, etc. (There has been a 90% decrease in workplace deaths between 1933 and 1999 due to government safety regulations, and a corresponding decrease in accidents of all sorts).

I'm sure other aspects of our lives would be equally interesting without those other pesky federal agencies. No interstate highways (or public roads of any type), no Food and Drug safety, no public schools...

Freedom isn't "free."

If you wanted that number, you'd get a time required to pay off one's taxes for each individual, then take the mean of those times. And that would yield a very different result from just taking (tax burden)/(GDP) and converting it into a date.

TF claims that the average (that is, mean) taxpayer pays 32.2 percent of his income in total taxes. [PDF, p. 1 and 2; also available in exec summary.] That works out to 119.355 days (which they, oddly, round to 120 days).

I'd agree that using GDP, which includes non-income in the equation, would be misleading, although it would seem to skew the data in the other direction, no? At any rate, they claim to be using income:

Every dollar that is officially called
income by the government is counted, and every
payment to the government that is
officially considered a tax is counted. Taxes at
all levels of government are included, whether
levied by Uncle Sam or state and local governments.

[...]

Determining the national Tax Freedom
Day involves calculating an overall effective tax
rate for the nation. This is done by dividing
the nation’s total tax payments by the nation’s
income. (p. 8)

I can't hardly blame them for using misleading "averages" since everyone does it.

The important message that needs to get across is how much we pay in hidden taxes. Those taxes that are built into the cost of our everyday expenses and not itemized like payroll deductions, sales tax or a check on April 15. Those taxes add up quickly and burden Americans more than they realize.

I think you miss my central point: EVEN IF we're looking for an arithmetic mean, the TF number is wrong if we're taking it to represent *the average (mean) taxpayer's TFD*. If you wanted that number, you'd get a time required to pay off one's taxes for each individual, then take the mean of those times. And that would yield a very different result from just taking (tax burden)/(GDP) and converting it into a date.