With the federal tax deadline moved to April 18 this year, people have an extra three days to procrastinate on their 2015 returns.
Even with this extension, Americans will still have to work on average another six days before reaching Tax Freedom Day -- the day they’ve earned what the government will take from them during 2016. But the evening news shows have refused to talk about it.
Six years ago, Tax Freedom Day fell on April 12, five days before tax day. In 2016, Tax Freedom Day isn’t until April 24; an astonishing 12 days later than in 2011, thanks to tax hikes including Obamacare.
Despite the fact that Tax Freedom Day has moved almost two weeks later into the year, the evening news shows on ABC, NBC, and CBS never covered it between April 5, 2011, and April 13, 2016. It’s as if the information didn’t exist -- except that The Tax Foundation has released a report on Tax Freedom Day since 2006. They also retroactively calculated Tax Freedom Day going back to 1900.
Pete Sepp, the president of The National Taxpayers Union, finds the media blackout inexcusable.
“Many Americans sense that their tax burdens are creeping upward and the major media have a duty to explore that phenomenon,” Sepp told the Media Research Center in an email.
“If in the process [the major media] want to have a debate over the data that goes into calculating Tax Freedom Day, so be it. The measurement is entirely defensible. But silence should not be an option,” Sepp continued.
According to Sepp, though some people may argue that Tax Freedom Day’s forward shift is because of an improving economy rather than outright tax hikes, that just demonstrates the “confiscatory nature” of taxes. “The faster people make money the faster the government takes it,” Sepp declared.
Since at least 1997, the news networks have negatively covered tax cuts while simultaneously defending tax increases. The media also gave the IRS a pass when they were caught targeting conservative groups in 2014. When Obamacare came into effect, it created or hiked 13 separate taxes, but the networks ignored them in 87 percent of news stories between Nov. 17, 2014 and Feb. 17, 2015.
