With American workers having just passed through another tax season, this is an appropriate occasion to look at the big picture on taxes.

The Tax Foundation reports that total tax collections reached a record $2.3 trillion in 1996. That means federal, state, and local levies on income, payroll, sales, and property extracted an average of $8,782 for every man, woman, and child in the country.Payroll taxes (collected in the name of Social Security and Medicare) bear heavily on all workers, and now add up to more than the total income tax bill for ordinary workers. Property taxes are a particular burden on homeowners and land- dependent businesses. Sales taxes and taxes on businesses are paid by all consumers; they accumulate quietly but currently add up to one-quarter of all taxes collected.

Income taxes act as disincentives to work, savings, and investment, because they rise sharply as you become more successful. Most Americans have no idea how unequally the income tax load is distributed. (Not surprising, given the steady media drumbeat about "tax breaks for the rich.") These are the facts: In 1994, the top one percent of American earners paid fully 29 percent of our income taxes. The top ten percent paid 59 percent of all collections. Meanwhile, the bottom half of the population, paid less than five percent of our income taxes.It’s often said that death and taxes are constants in life, which is true enough. What often goes unmentioned is that taxes now intrude on our lives much more than they did in the recent past. The graph below depicts how the total tax burden on typical American families has changed in just one generation.

The next chart, below, shows that a typical family now pays as much in taxes as it does for food, clothing, housing, and medical care combined.