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Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

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Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#41

Post by kitt »

jsz0 wrote: post #15

I always thought it would be a good idea to let people decide how part of their tax dollars were going to be spent. Set aside maybe 20-30% and let them choose which programs to give extra funding to. I imagine most of it would end up in education and social programs.

And this is what I was about to post, but instead of 20-30%, make it 51%. Allow taxpayers to decide where (the broad categories the receipt listed are a perfect starting point) their tax dollars are going. The remaining 49% can be discretionary, let the government decide where that goes: fill in the gaps for items needed, but that no one wants to pay for.

Such a policy would give people a sense of power over the money they're paying. I, for one, would begrudge less the paying of taxes if the monies went to programs important to me.

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#42

Post by hugh3 »

kscaldef wrote: post #36
Aetius wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, after all, NPR...no surprise the war was prominent as they have a decidedly progressive news team. I won't call NPR liberal, but certainly left of center, and very critical (as they should be) of the wars.

I think the bias in the table actually goes the other way. By breaking down, and omitting parts of, military spending, they make it look relatively minor compared to SS, Medicare, and Medicaid. They have also chosen to display SS intakes, not outflows, which is a $400B difference.

If you look at the pdf from the think tank which came up with it, you'll see that one of their arguments for doing it this way is that "An educated taxpayer is a progressive's best customer", leaving no doubt what their political agenda is.

Somewhat disingenuous from a think tank called the "Third Way", which was originally intended to imply centrism. Still, it's a general law of NPR reporting that a left-wing think tank is called a "think tank" and a right-wing think tank is called a "right-wing think tank".

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#43

Post by VBprogrammer »

hugh3 wrote: post #10
brown9-2 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: "selected items", if you click through to the PDF there is a footnote attached: >4 Budget calculations are based on budget allocations obtained from the Office of Management and Budget using historical tables from the FY2011 budget submission as well as the Congressional Budget Office website for such items as interest on the debt, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. My guess is that the real cause of "selec…

My guess is that the real cause of "selected items" is that the number of things paid for by your taxes are obviously much larger than could fit on a short list, and has a long tail. Well, of course that depends how you slice it. Break it down by department and it looks more like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fy2010_spending_by_categor... The twenty-something listed departments account for 97% of the budget…

If you are ever asked to make a Pie Chart for general distribution please take this as a perfect example of what not to do. This is almost completely unreadable for 6-8% of the male population who suffer from colour-blindness (myself included).

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#44

Post by city41 »

ihodes wrote: post #32

Original paper (not blogspam, if you feel okay calling some of NPR that): http://content.thirdway.org/publications/335/Third_Way_Idea_... This is a brilliant idea, and in the spirit of a democratic republic, I'd say. I'm paying taxes; it'd be nice to know what exactly I'm paying for. I'm also for listing all the expenses; down to the ones that end up costing you a millicent. Perhaps yet more feasible would be setting…

But it's not the entire story. Just because X dollars was spent on the military for example, how much of that X was actually put to good use? As a former employee of a military contractor, I can attest there are entire companies built around taking advantage of how inefficiently the government spends its money.

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#45

Post by wuputah »

I do like the idea, but a cursory look at their 'receipt' and where the numbers come from showed a pretty large flaw: half of social security and medicare is paid for by employers. Unless you consider your salary to be an extra 8.65% than it really is, you're not accounting for all the taxes the government receives based on your paycheck. Although this is really a "hidden tax" on your paycheck, most people don't think of it as part of their salary (which is why they do it this way).

There's also other types of taxes paid by non-individuals, like corporate taxes, estate taxes, and the like.

In any case, it means the numbers in their receipt for SS and Medicare are off by a factor of 2, so you should evaluate this only based on the idea, not on their actual numbers. (Not to mention there are likely an abundance of other problems with this method, like spending that is not part of the budget, or when the government is over-budget and issues bonds to pay for it.)

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#46

Post by pigbucket »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #28

The late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan supported sending people statements of what was in their social security. His idea was that if people never saw what was in there, they'd never miss it when it was gone. I think this is a logical extension of that idea, and its great. I'd also like to see the flip side of the receipt contain a guess for how the same tax amount would break down the following year based on curre…

From the linked Thirdway page:

> Would this be hard and expensive for the federal government to do? It shouldn't be. The mathematical formula to do this is very simple. The Social Security Administration does this every year ... This would be far easier. It could also be done online. An IRS website should be available so people could key in the amount they pay in taxes and a receipt pops up showing several dozen recognizable programs and the amount that went to each of them

Your point, I take it, is about government resistances and inefficiencies, and spot on. But it wouldn't have to be the government to do this. The information is available. Thirdway, or anyone, could do it themselves and make it available to any website. A developer could do an app and sell it for a dollar.

edit: that was quick: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1745312

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#47

Post by projectileboy »

kscaldef wrote: post #36
Aetius wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, after all, NPR...no surprise the war was prominent as they have a decidedly progressive news team. I won't call NPR liberal, but certainly left of center, and very critical (as they should be) of the wars.

I think the bias in the table actually goes the other way. By breaking down, and omitting parts of, military spending, they make it look relatively minor compared to SS, Medicare, and Medicaid. They have also chosen to display SS intakes, not outflows, which is a $400B difference.

I thought the same thing. It looked as though they completely left out weapons procurement outside the scope of the wars, which seems almost dishonest. But it feels like I'm nitpicking; overall it's definitely a worthwhile effort.

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#48

Post by Poiesis »

hugh3 wrote: post #42
kscaldef wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the bias in the table actually goes the other way. By breaking down, and omitting parts of, military spending, they make it look relatively minor compared to SS, Medicare, and Medicaid. They have also chosen to display SS intakes, not outflows, which is a $400B difference.

If you look at the pdf from the think tank which came up with it, you'll see that one of their arguments for doing it this way is that "An educated taxpayer is a progressive's best customer", leaving no doubt what their political agenda is. Somewhat disingenuous from a think tank called the "Third Way", which was originally intended to imply centrism. Still, it's a general law of NPR reporting that a left-wing think…

Still, it's a general law of NPR reporting that a left-wing think tank is called a "think tank" and a right-wing think tank is called a "right-wing think tank".

I don't really have a dog in this fight, but a quick search suggests you may be mistaken. [site:npr.org "right-wing think tank"] os 8 results; [site:npr.org "think tank"] has about 2380. Nothing funny in robots.txt.

But you never know, maybe there aren't that many transcripts on there or something...

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#50

Post by julian37 »

I wonder if these numbers are made up or have any basis in reality.

One item that caught my eye was spending on the DEA of only $3.14: Wikipedia puts yearly spending on law enforcement related to the War On Drugs at about $44 billion [1] and gross federal tax revenue for 2009 at about $2.1 trillion [2]. This works out to roughly 2% of tax revenue spent on the War On Drugs. For the $5,400 of federal income tax in the linked example that would work out to more like $100 rather than $3, no?

Of course, the Wikipedia article doesn't state how much of the $44 billion goes to the DEA and how much goes to other law enforcement agencies.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs#Costs_to_taxpayers

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Ma...

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