Tax Freedom Day, calculated by the Tax Foundation, “represents how long Americans as a whole have to work in order to pay the nation’s tax burden.” It appears that they stopped publishing this in 2019, but others have picked up where they left off.
The idea is that the income earned by taxpayers over a certain proportion of the year goes to Uncle Sam. In 2025, that date was April 16th.
But the burden of government is much larger than the amount we pay in taxes. The government spends much more than it collects in taxes, diverting valuable resources away from where they would be used in the private market economy, subject to the profit and loss test of the market. The difference is made up by new government debt.
Much of that debt is purchased by the Federal Reserve with new money, resulting in price inflation, exacerbated income inequality, booms and busts, and financial fragility. The cost of government is much more than what we pay in taxes.
Rothbard suggested a measure of “total government depredation on the economy” that involves starting with net national product (like GDP but takes capital depreciation into account) and deducting all government spending at all levels, including transfer payments, government officials’ salaries, and the salaries of those employed by government enterprises. Rothbard considered all government activity as a depredation.
In 2025, this total fiscal burden was $11 trillion. Net national product was $25.7 trillion, which gives us a ratio of 42.7%. When we turn that ratio into a date on the calendar, we get June 5.
In short, while Tax Freedom Day is mid-April, Rothbard’s measure of the government’s fiscal burden reveals that Americans don’t truly start working for themselves until June 5, over seven weeks later.
Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.
