Budget & Tax

How Long Do Oklahomans Work to Pay Their Taxes?

August 17, 2008

J. Scott Moody, Wendy Warcholik, Ph.D.

In 2006, Oklahomans paid $10,665,186,000 in state and local taxes—including income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and more. This is such a mind-bogglingly large number that it might as well be hieroglyphics.

To put this into a more understandable form, let’s imagine a typical eight-hour workday and divide that workday into all the major items that Oklahomans pay for in a given year—items such as housing, food, clothing, transportation, and more. The chart below shows the proportion of the workday spent working to pay for each of these items.

Disturbingly, Oklahomans spend 173 minutes of every workday laboring to pay their federal, state, and local taxes. This compares to the 150 minutes they work in order to pay for food, clothing, and shelter. Repeat: Oklahomans spend more time working to pay their taxes than they do to pay for food, clothing, and shelter combined.

State and local taxes alone (55 minutes) consume more of the workday than health care, entertainment, and clothing purchases combined (47 minutes). Of these state and local taxes, the single largest tax forcing Oklahomans to work so hard is the sales tax (16 minutes), followed by the individual income tax (14 minutes).

J. Scott Moody (M.A., George Mason University) and Wendy P. Warcholik (Ph.D., George Mason University) are OCPA research fellows.