Today, May 7, is Tax Freedom Day -- that concept dreamed up by the Tax Foundation to illustrate the steady growth in taxes at all levels of government over the years. It is not a static date, like July 4, but a very moveable festival -- almost inevitably moving forward on the calendar.

It is the day when average Americans stop working to pay government's bills and start working to pay their own. They spend 128 days -- 35 percent of the year -- to pay their taxes -- or an hour and fifty minutes of each eight-hour day to pay the IRS (state taxes add another 57 minutes).

• Tax Day falls one day later this year than it did last.

• As recently as 1992, it fell on April 30 -- marking the end of a five-year decline from 1987, when it fell on May 4.

• The last record was set in 1981 on May 5, before the Reagan tax cuts and California's Prop. 13 rolled it temporarily back into April.

• If we include the billions it costs to comply with taxes -- $157 billion a year -- Tax Day is actually May 20.

Actually, Tax Freedom Day varies from state to state.

• Connecticut taxpayers: please refrain from celebration until May 31 -- until each man, woman and child of you has forked over $13,580 in federal, state and local taxes.

• New Yorkers may not start festivities until May 26 -- until you have met your $11,669 obligation.

• Alabamians, on the other hand, may have already forgotten their party, which occurred back on April 23 -- after they had anted-up $6,457 each -- making theirs the earliest Tax Freedom Day in the country.

Looking back in history:

• From 1776 until the early 1900s, total government spending seldom rose above 10 percent of national income (except in wartime).

• In 1913, Tax Freedom day fell on January 30.

• By 1940, FDR's New Deal had advanced it to March 8.

• As LBJ's Great Society programs and the Vietnam war devoured government revenues, it fast-forwarded to April 30 by 1969.

As for the future? Tax Foundation economists forecast that the average American's tax burden will continue to rise through the end of the decade. But the bite is already profound -- the median American family already pays more for taxes than for housing, food, clothing and medical care combined.

Sources: Editorial, "Free At Last!" Investor's Business Daily, May 7, 1996; Perspective, "Freedom Tax," Investor's Business Daily, May 7, 1996.