EDITORIAL TIME TO PAY UP THE JOYS OF APRIL 15.

TODAY marks those most dreaded date on the taxpayer's calendar: April 15.

It's a day known for long lines at post offices mobbed by late filers, and the mad rush to complete the dreaded 1040. For taxpayers, it can either be a day of anguish and despair upon the discovery that the government wants yet more of their money, or happy relief that a refund is on its way.

But for all of us, it's a day worth taking a moment to consider if we're getting out money's worth out of our government.

For 30 years, the nonpartisan Tax Foundation in Washington, D.C., has calculated the approximate date of ``Tax Freedom Day'' - that is, the day of the year on which, if we had to pay all of our taxes before we could keep any of our income, we would finally be free of the federal, state and local tax burden.

This year in California, Tax Freedom Day doesn't arrive until April 29 - two weeks away. That makes the Golden State the 10th-most highly taxed in the country.

But the news isn't all bad. Last year, freedom for Californian taxpayers didn't arrive until May 2.

The reason for the improvement, according to the Tax Foundation's economists is partially a sluggish economy, and partially federal tax cuts. After 10 years of steady increases, the tax toll is finally starting to come down.

And even though the tax code gets consistently more complex and maddening with each year, filing taxes is now easier than ever, thanks to the advent of do-it-yourself tax software.

Whereas the job of filling out myriad tax forms used to take the average filer days if not weeks, it now can often be done in a matter of hours on one's own personal computer.

Yet even with the benefit of technological simplification, the Tax Foundation estimates that the costs of simply complying with the tax code - separate from the costs of actually paying taxes - will come to $194 billion this year.

That's great news for accountants, attorneys and IRS bureaucrats, but it comes at a tremendous price to the economy in terms of time wasted and dollars spent on process rather than substance.

Too often, that can be said for the money we pay in taxes, too.

There are, to be sure, many good things government does with the money it quietly deducts from our pay checks. It builds roads. It pays teachers. It keeps criminals locked safely behind bars. It pays the soldiers and buys the equipment necessary prosecute the war on terrorism.

Yet it also keeps many a shiftless bureaucrat over-employed, and pays for the special favors politicians use to reward their favorite campaign donors. It subsidizes massive inefficiencies and deep-rooted corruption.

For the amount we shell out on April 15 and every other day, Americans deserve the best government that money can buy.

More often than not, we get far less.