Happy Tax Freedom Day

Saturday, 11 April 2015: I hate the smell of tax in the morning. And today is the first morning of 2015 where the air is clear.Today is Tax Freedom Day. It is the first day of the year when a country has, in theory, earned enough money to pay all its taxes. Today is the 100th day of the year, which means Australia (as a whole) spends 100 days of the year working just to pay tax. If we start those 100 days from January 1, the whole country works until April 11 just to pay tax.That leaves the rest of the working year to start paying for our own essentials, like the rent or the mortgage, food, electricity, telephone, insurance, fuel, clothes, rates (that list seems endless). If it is a good year, there will be a few days at the end of December where we earn enough to pay for non-essentials. Luckily Christmas is at the very end of the year! And then it all starts over again.To put Tax Freedom Day in context, consider this: In 2015 it falls on April 11. Last year it fell on April 10. That extra day where the whole nation is working just to pay tax is another step along the socialist path to increased waste, increased debt, increased tax, and increased government control in our lives. Essentially, this is the path that the Labor-Greens Alliance years of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments set this country on.Where does this path lead? Well, let's consider Greece, which was the target set by the Labor-Greens Alliance. All those years of repeatedly telling Australians that our debt "is not as high as Greece" suggested the Greek economy was a perfectly acceptable way to run a country. It is not. And yet the Intergeneration Report demonstrated that the Labor-Greens trajectory had us catching up to Spain and closing in on Greece. So when does Greece celebrate Tax Freedom Day? In 2012, the Greek economy spent every day from January 1 to June 19 just to meet their tax commitments. Half the year working for the government!The most annoying thing about the Labor-Greens Alliance economic policy is their disconnect with the Australian people and refusal to acknowledge where the money comes from. Every time Bill Shorten or Chris Bowen get in front of a camera and spruik about how the government has the capacity to service higher debt, they are not talking about THEIR capacity to service higher debt. They are talking about YOUR capacity to service higher debt. If debt keeps increasing and spending keeps increasing, there is only one place that money can come from - YOU.Taxpayers already spend 100 days of the year working just to pay tax. The Socialists want to make that 365 days a year, with every minute you work just raising money for the government so the government can decide where you live, how you live, what you eat, what you wear, what car you drive (or whether you drive a car at all).Personally, I prefer waking up to the smell of freedom. And I would rather be waking up to that smell much earlier in the year.