Two Things to Remember on Tax Day

By Bob Bauman

Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it's simply somebody else's problem. So with that in mind…

1) Nearly half of U.S. households pay no federal income taxes
About 47% of Americans will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability.

The result is a tax system that exempts almost half the country from paying for programs that benefit everyone, including national defense, public safety, infrastructure and education...

It is a system in which the top 10% of earners — households making an average of $366,400 in 2006 — paid about 73% of the income taxes collected by the federal government.
The bottom 40%, on average, make a profit from the federal income tax, meaning they get more money in tax credits than they would otherwise owe in taxes. For those people, the government sends them a payment.

"We have 50% of people who are getting something for nothing," said Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. Read more here.

Something for nothing? Remind you of anyone else? …

2) U.S. national debt is heading for crisis level
Lost amid last month's passage of the new health care law, the Congressional Budget Office issued an intriguing report.

It showed that within this decade, President Obama's own budget sends the U.S. government to a potential tipping point where the debt reaches 90 percent of gross domestic product.

Economists Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University have recently shown that a 90% debt-to-GDP ratio usually touches off a crisis.

This year, the debt will reach 63% of GDP, a ratio that has ignited crises in smaller wealthy nations. Fiscal crises gripped Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Ireland when their debts were below where the United States is shortly headed.

Will YOU be prepared to react when the collapse comes?

Do you have plans in place to save yourself and your family from the personal impact of America's national financial ruin?