Congratulations! You're now working to line your own pockets instead of Uncle Sam's. Tuesday was income-tax deadline day and, coincidentally, also what is known as Tax Freedom Day. That's the day of the year when, on average, Americans have earned enough to pay all their taxes; the money we earn from Tuesday forward we get to keep for ourselves.

The Tax Foundation calculates Tax Freedom Day based on workers' current 29.2 percent federal, state and local taxes.

Now brace for the bad news: Tax Freedom Day 2012 comes four days later than it did last year. Worse, 112 years ago, it came on Jan. 22. That's 85 days sooner than this year.

If average folks feel put upon by escalating tax burdens, consider the much-abused top 1 percent of income earners, who are targeted in particular by tax-hike advocates.

For several years now, the share of taxes paid by the top 1 percent has hovered around 40 percent. Only in a world of class warfare would such an inequitable distribution be considered fair. In fact, President Obama thinks it's not fair enough. He would gouge the rich even more.

The president's motive is not simply to enrich the government treasury, although that was an early excuse he invoked. The real reason he wants the top 1 percent to pay a greater percentage of taxes is to redistribute their wealth.

What have perhaps more liberty-minded presidents thought about that?

"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate ... the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it," said Thomas Jefferson.

President Obama believes that seizing rich people's money is a political winner in an election year. Is it? The Roper Organization found that between 1972 and 1992, 72 percent to 80 percent of people said high-income families paid too little in taxes. But by 2011, the Gallup Poll discovered that only 59 percent believe the wealthy pay too little.

FROM THE NORTHWEST FLORIDA DAILY NEWS