2011 Federal Taxpayer Receipt: Important Information and a Few Realizations
LizBR
Posted on January 23, 2013
The White House website has a really cool program that breaks down the things your federal tax dollars covered in 2011.
We had a weird year in 2011, with me finishing my thesis in the spring and getting hired into my full-time job in August, and Chalupa working at the University of New Hampshire full-time until October, when he became a part-time distance employee working from home in Indiana. In other words, it’s a little hard to estimate what our income was in 2011 without tracking down our tax receipts, so I just went ahead and pretended that we made in 2011 what we made in 2012 and used that as a baseline for estimating our family’s tax rate.
I got some pretty fascinating results.
About 50% of my total taxes went to social security and Medicare. The remaining 50% was made up of income taxes, and it went to a lot of different places.
Of the income tax, about:
- 25% went to the military
- 24% went to healthcare (including CHIP, food health and safety, COBRA, disease control, etc.)
- 19% went to job and family security (unemployment insurance, certain retirement plans for federal employees and veterans, foster care and adoption support, TANF, etc.)
And under 5% went to each of the following:
- education and job training
- veterans’ benefits
- natural resources, energy, and the environment
- international affairs
- science and space programs
- immigration, law enforcement, and administration of justice
- agriculture
- community and regional development
- response to natural disasters
A couple of interesting numbers are that my taxes included about $32 spent on TANF (food stamps), $36 on international humanitarian aid, $27 to NASA, $110 on “elementary, secondary, and vocational” education, $18 in response to natural disasters, $91 in housing assistance, $459 to Medicaid, $32 on environmental protection, and $41 on education and job training for people with disabilities.
You know how all of that makes me feel?
Awesome.
I mean, look at that! Look at all of the things I got to contribute to in 2011! Those small numbers add up in some really cool ways, and it makes me really patriotic to see everything that my taxes help cover.
Do I love every single thing that my taxes go toward? Of course not. But when I look at all of the things I get to contribute to–helping a family out who needs food stamps, contributing to the salary of someone in the armed forces, giving an education to someone who needs it, chipping in toward rent for someone who has a minimum wage job or who can’t work because they’re too sick, providing insurance so kids with poor parents can still go to the doctor–I get really excited.
It’s easy to have a bad attitude about taxes, especially when you see the amount that is coming out with every paycheck. I understand that there are limits to what each of us considers an appropriate amount to be taxed, too, and I think that’s reasonable. I just wish that we could be more enthusiastic and excited about the fact that we live in a country where we’ve decided that for the greater good, we’re going to chip in and take care of each other. We’re going to help out when things go wrong. We’re not going to make contributing optional.
I think that when my next paycheck gets here, I might have to look at those little numbers a bit differently.
Tagged: government, politics, spending, taxes
Thanks for this. I love how positive you are. I, too, like the stuff about helping people, but I tend to focus on how much I dislike, which isn’t doing me any favors.
It has never occurred to me to feel GOOD about paying taxes before. I’ve just kind of seen it as a necessary evil. This breakdown really changed my perspective. I don’t know–seeing numbers attached seems to have forced me to take a more positive look at this stuff.
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I also think, why can’t I look at that 25% that goes toward the military and just decide that I’m going to view that as going toward someone’s salary and not, say, weapons that kill people? I mean, it’s not like my money is allotted toward a specific thing for the military, so why not view it that way?
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Perhaps that’s compatmentalizing a bit too much, but why not? There are no rules that I can’t view my tax dollars as contributing to one sub-category instead of another. It’s not like there is a list somewhere that says “People whose last name starts with R? Their money goes to drone attacks.”
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I’m sure there is waste in there somewhere. I’m sure there are better ways to spend some of the money. But this is the deal for living here: if I want the benefits of being an American who makes a reasonable wage, then I chip in for everything.
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It reminds me of an article you wrote, actually! The one where you talk about why socialism isn’t about some people benefiting while others just give? I’m trying to think of what that article was…
Yeah – I think that’s a good way of looking at it. And you’re right, when I plugged it in, I was like, “hey, I basically gave away thousands of dollars last year, and here I was feeling sad that I didn’t have enough money to give to charitble donations.” I get hung up on the military, though.
Related: I really enjoyed reading about the Buffett Rule, and seeing how many millionaires paid a lower effective tax rate than I did, at this address:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/economy/buffett-rule
taxpayers helped me adopt a kid a few years back. i guess i’m biased but that seems like a pretty nice way to use tax money. so, thanks everyone!
(granted, it might be nicer if lawyers didn’t charge an arm and a leg knowing that government refunds were going to be paying for it anyway, but that’s a conversation for a different blog post…)