$10K per Taxpayer

That is about how much it would cost to close the US budget deficit for 2010. Using data from the Tax Foundation, Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center has created a chart which shows the average increase in tax burden per taxpayer required to balance the annual federal budget.  The cost to close the...

That is about how much it would cost to close the US budget deficit for 2010. Using data from the Tax Foundation, Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center has created a chart which shows the average increase in tax burden per taxpayer required to balance the annual federal budget.  The cost to close the deficit in for 2010 is $9,825 per tax payer. This works out to be 22.6% of the income of the average employed American according to statistics from the BLS, more than the average Midwestern family spends on transportation per year.

The report from the Tax Foundation this diagram is based on projections of future budget deficits and may not reflect the actual cost of paying down those deficits; it may very well cost more.

The state of Illinois seems to be following in the footsteps of the National government in creating unbalanced budgets.  The estimated deficit for the 2011 budget is over 4.6 billion dollars, with only around6 million taxpayers that is a burden of $781 per taxpayer, or more than the price of a new 42 inch HDTV.

This in