AMERICAN TAXPAYERS ARE GIVING THEIR SHARE

On this day, you have either paid federal and state income taxes, have a refund on the way, have sought an extension or have violated the law. Feel better? In case the psychological hangover from Tax Day 1992 isn't enough to dampen your mood, consider that Tax Freedom Day is still more than three weeks away. If you're in no mood for more revenue obligations, better keep the headache relief close at hand.

Tax Freedom Day is a symbolic date on the calendar when the average person would finish paying federal, state and local taxes if all earnings since Jan. 1 were turned over to government for fulfilling tax requirements. This is computed by a Washington organization known as the Tax Foundation, which serves as a watchdog over such matters. The last two years, Tax Freedom Day was observed on May 8.

The word "observed" is proper here; the holiday is not to be celebrated, especially as governmental capriciousness pushes it later into the calendar. According to "Facts and Figures on Government Finance," Tax Freedom Day was on Feb. 9 in 1929. The ascent that followed is charted below:

1940 March 8

1950 April 3

1960 April 17

1970 April 28

1980 May 1

1990 May 8

Calculated another way, for each eight-hour day a worker puts in, almost three of those hours are spent working for government. Sixty years ago, less than an hour of each workday was spent satisfying the government. As tax bites go, the current one has sharp teeth. It bears noting that during the 1980s, when critics were berating White House occupants for relaxing tax burdens and destroying social programs, Tax Freedom Day adversely moved a full week and the federal budget grew fatter.

What does this tell us? It is not a blanket condemnation of all new tax measures put before the public. In certain circumstances, tax proposals are reasonable and necessary, and voters owe it to themselves and their government to study each issue on its own merits and make re~spon~sible choices at the ballot box. What the numbers serve to indicate, along with this grim movable holiday, is that Americans are being increasingly taxed, and no number of pleas by government for additional help should convince taxpayers their participation is lacking.

If anything good has come from the various fiscal crises that public bodies are now claiming, it's that the mind set of government is shifting to include the philosophy that taxpayers' pockets are not bottomless.