(MONEY Magazine) – You could call it the supreme irony of life in these United States, circa 1991-92: Congress fiddles with middle-class tax breaks while that beleaguered class burns over state and local tax hikes. If Capitol Hill's helping hands were to offset the increases, who could complain? But millions of taxpayers have lately been discovering today's truly terrible news about taxes: most of the pain is being inflicted at the state and local levels, and even the federal bite has gotten deeper in insidious ways that aren't always obvious. If you are not fully aware of these seismic tax shifts, it's time to get educated. Start with these findings by the Tax Foundation, a research group in Washington, D.C., for a typical two-earner household with two dependent children and gross income of $53,265 in 1991: -- The household's total federal taxes have shot up about 80% since 1980, from $8,015 to $14,918, despite the wave of Reagan-era income tax cuts. Over the same 11 years, the family's income rose by 9.6%, or $2,835, after taxes and inflation. The chief culprit: the Social Security tax, which has increased seven times since 1980 and now siphons off 7.65% of the family's earnings, or $4,075 -- more than double the take in 1980. Furthermore, the 1990 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act chipped as much as 8.2% out of the household's earnings through such indirect levies as the 14 cents-a-gallon gasoline tax and the 3% phone tax. All together, the family's Social Security and indirect taxes came to $8,425 in 1991, 30% more than its federal income tax of $6,493. -- State and local taxes showed the highest increase of all, up 112% in the 11 years, from $2,495 to $5,321. Worse yet, state and local taxes are rising 2.6 percentage points a year faster than federal income taxes as a percentage of the family's income. ''Through the '80s, direct federal taxes have grown 4.5% a year, compared with 7.2% for state and local,'' says Gregory Leong, director of special studies at the Tax Foundation. ''If this rate persists, the amount you pay for state and local income taxes will surpass your federal contribution by the end of the '90s.'' When viewed against this backdrop, nearly all the tax cuts being proposed on Capitol Hill seem laughable. The Tax Foundation has figured the net savings for the same $53,265 household under each of the 14 plans. The best known, that of Democratic Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, would trim the family's tax bill by $1,160 a year. But the proposal from Democratic Representative Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois would save them only $400. And they would avoid a piddling $267 under the plan of Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. (For the odds on these proposals becoming law, see Money Newsline on page 29.) Clearly, Congress will not come to taxpayers' rescue even if, as expected, it enacts some kind of tax package by April. That should not surprise you. MONEY's latest Americans and Their Money poll of 300 randomly selected subscribers, conducted by the Gallup Organization, found that more than half of the respondents believed Congress was likely to raise taxes for everyone over the next two years -- in other words, after November's presidential election. (The survey, taken in late October, has an error margin of seven percentage points.) Taxpayers aren't merely being cynical. The poll results, shown in the tables on this page and elsewhere in this 20-page special report, reflect a far stronger emotion -- raw anger. For the third year in a row, most of those surveyed complain that their tax dollars are particularly ill-spent by the feds. In addition, dismay over state and local tax burdens has deepened in each of the past three years. This special report can help you meet today's triple-tax challenge. The articles that follow spell out the seriousness of the problem in the states, explain who is getting hit the hardest and tell you what to do about it. You'll also find two essential tables: MONEY's third annual ranking of the tax load in all 50 states and the District of Columbia (pages 74 and 75) and a new comparison of the property taxes in 300 communities (pages 78 and 79). For state breaks that you may be overlooking, see Editor's Notes on page 5. If you're losing confidence in your ability to minimize what you pay, especially to your statehouse, turn to page 82 and learn how George and Barbara Bush managed to pay less than 1% of their 1990 income in state taxes. Finally, on page 90 we describe the last of the great federal tax shelters. If you're not enjoying the shade they provide, you are probably surrendering a lot of extra tax dollars to the Internal Revenue Service.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: NO CREDIT CAPTION: Property taxes are clearly the heaviest, and federal taxes are by far the least well spent. That's what more and more respondents to MONEY's annual tax poll have concluded for each of the past three years. HOW DOES YOUR TAX BURDEN COMPARE TO LAST YEAR'S? ARE YOUR TAXES WELL SPENT? WHICH TAX IS UP THE MOST?