Tracking Your Taxes, Day-by-Day! One Man is Doing It.

Here is a man committed to an important mission. He is tracking every penny he spends, each and every day in 2009, and every penny paid out to taxes - and posting the information on his blog. I don't think I could stand to be that depressed daily - my money winging toward Congress each time I make a purchase or receive a paycheck. Clay Bowler at Bungalow Bill's Conservative Wisdom has begun the mission and has posted his first day's expenditures. Below is his original post on what the project involves, and why he is doing it. You can view his initial expenditures and payments here. Visit his homepage for ongoing postings and follow along with me as the year progresses.

There are few times in life that money exchanges hands in which the government doesn't get a percentage of the transaction. The government gets away with taking more and more of your money each year in dozens of taxes and fees. Legislators spend your hard earned dollars and then steal more discovering new ways to tax you. Often the projects they spend your money on are useless pork projects which add to the federal deficit. I have had enough. I have longed search for a way to open the eyes of hard working Americans. I feel the best to wake Americans up to the cost of taxation is to list every tax I pay for the entire year in hopes that I build a following. I understand this may be financially voyeuristic, but I would rather take a stand in hopes of angering Americans to how their government is robbing them every chance they get. As the numbers add up day after day, the cost and impact of taxation upon an average taxpayers life will be documented for the rest of the country to see.

Most Americans don't pay attention because we are nickel and dimed here and there. Since our paychecks suffer taxation before we see the money, we often don't think about the total amounts we are FORCED to pay. It's adding up, and it's keeping many from achieving a family vacation, a better car, or a bigger house.

Each day, I will list the taxes I paid that day. I will then tally up the totals for 2009. I predict when the year is over, I have been robbed of just over 50% of my income. I hope to wake Americans up to the fact that freedom has become a rhetorical word for the Fourth of July.

Consider this as I begin the voyage of leading you through the taxation of an American for one year. Americans are being robbed of their right to own personal property. As long as you pay a tax on your property year after year, you never own it, because the day you fail to pay the taxes on your property, the government confiscates it. How can you really own something that the government has that much power over?

Let the eye opening begin.