HOW THE GOVERNMENT SPENDS YOUR TAXES
Americans signed and filed their taxes on April 15th • Like many tax filers we all wonder where does our money go when the government gets its hands on it?
It is not a Simple question. For those who have trouble balancing their checkbooks imagine trying to keep track of where $4.1
trillion goes. That is what was spent on our behalf at all levels of federal, state and local governments in 2007.
Even with armies of accountants and auditors, it is hard to know with certainty exactly where your taxes ended up. For starters, you pay taxes based on a calendar year; the government spends it based on a fiscal year that begins October 1st. Even if the calendars matched up, the journey your tax dollars embark on depends a lot on things like how much you make, how you spend it and where you live.
Still, while administration tax cuts and the rise of the Alternative Minimum Tax have shifted the burden of who pays what, the size of the average tax bite on all of us has not changed much.
"The burden of government overall has remained relatively flat since 1970," said Gerald Prante, a senior economist with the Tax Foundation.
On average, about two-thirds of your taxes went to Uncle Sam last year and the rest went to your state, county or other local government, according to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Where did your money go after you sent it off to Tax Heaven? One way to find out is to look at the government's bills. If the government sat down at the kitchen table to try to see where its paycheck went, here, very roughly, is where it went in 2007.
To make the math a little easier, let us assume the government made $52,000 a year or $1,000 a week which is about the median household income in the U.S. Keep in mind that $1,000 a week does not include taxes. But you are the government and you do not pay taxes.
The biggest government bill last year was for a category called "income security" ($220 of that $1,000 weekly paycheck), which includes Social Security ($115), along with other social services like welfare ($46), disability payments ($35) and unemployment insurance ($7). The next biggest chunk went to pay for health care ($203), which includes Medicaid and Medicare.
Keeping our country and your neighborhood safe cost almost $200 a week, including national defense ($132), along with spending on "public order and safety" ($65), which included police ($27), prisons ($18), courts ($12) and fighting fires ($8).
Education took the next biggest slice ($158) most of which went to pay for elementary and secondary schools ($117). Much of the rest helped pay for college ($28). About $2 a week of our $1,000 a week paycheck went to pay for public libraries.
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