The Tax Foundation

I recently discovered taxfoundation.org, the website of The Tax Foundation.  The foundation was created in New York City in 1937 to “monitor fiscal activities at all levels of government and convey the information to the general public.”  Based in D.C., their site descrbes it as a “nonpartisan tax research group based in Washington, D.C.,” but this description only seems half true.  It’s nonpartisan in that it actually conducts research, but it’s partisan in that its research is pretty slanted.   

A section of their site is dedicated to data, charts, and maps, and a lot of it is useful; there is a lot of very granular data already crunched and made pretty.  But a lot of it is misleading: the few times the data ventures into international territory, for example, they look at our statutory corporate tax rate when the better measure to use is the effective corporate tax rate. 

On the other hand, it has characteristics that make it similar to an advocacy organization.  It was founded by businessmen dismayed at the profligacy of the New Deal, and that mindset still permeates the organization.  The organization does not look like a bunch of hacks, but they are definitely political and have an agenda in mind.  According to their research, excise taxes are to be avoided; most Americans are taking resources from well-off Americans through redistribution (this is a very Randian idea); taxes are too high; and the top 1% pay too much in taxes.

Their blog provides a lot of current information on tax issues throughout nation, albeit from a conservative perspective.

So you get the idea.  In addition to their research, which does at least involve numbers, the Foundation created and sponsor Tax Freedom Day.  TFD is the day of the year when individual income to that point equals what the government will collect in tax revenue for the year, e.g. it was April 13th this year because the effective tax rate is 28.2% as calculated by TTF.  The chart the Foundation produces gives a rough guide to the evolution of our tax burden:

But you don’t see Brookings hosting a Tax Freedom Day, and that says all there is to know about TTF.