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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.

#61

Post by jimbokun »

Aetius wrote: post #16
hugh3 wrote: post #2

Not a bad idea. But why does it say "selected items"? I haven't added the numbers up myself, but one of the comments says that the listed things add up to only sixty-something percent of the total. Where's the other money gone? One might almost think they're trying to make a political point with their careful selection of items (eg. "Combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan" somehow got to fifth place on the list wh…

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.

So only progressives want to know how much we spend in Iraq and Afghanistan? Depressing, if true.

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

#62

Post by grandalf »

kscaldef wrote: post #38
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…

We do get annual statements from the SSA. The benefit amounts listed on mine are not insubstantial. (Whether you believe those numbers of the long term is a different question...)

They are in future dollars, so $1000 shown on your statement is $400 in 30 years from now, assuming inflation stays around 3%.

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

#63

Post by nhebb »

hugh3 wrote: post #17
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.

Your comment would have been much better without injecting your own political opinions on the matter via the parenthetical "as they should be".

Everyone should be critical of wars. I think there's a knee jerk reaction to label war critics as partisan, but questioning war really should be apolitical. I'm a veteran (go 10th Mountain!) and a Republican, and I'm critical of wars. I don't feel that we have a clear, achievable goal in Afghanistan, and I'm appalled at the complete apathy by the media and America public to the fact that we are at war, both taking and losing lives.

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

#64

Post by btilly »

julian37 wrote: post #50

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…

According to http://www.justice.gov/dea/agency/staffing.htm, we spent $2.602 billion on the DEA in 2009. That would make the naive figure $6.69. However the USA ran a $1.4 trillion dollar deficit. That means that fully 40% of federal spending was paid for by future debt, not taxpayer revenue. That reduces the figure spent on the DEA down to $4.015. As for the remaining difference, I suspect that the numbers don't count social security as a tax (officially it is not a tax, and officially money transferred from social security to the general revenue via purchases of treasury bonds is debt owed back to social security at some future point) which reduces the amount that comes out of your actual federal income taxes.

Furthermore the USA has some other forms of revenue. Such as tarriffs and fines. Put that together and I can believe that the figure given is reasonable.

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

#66

Post by ryanwaggoner »

dkasper wrote: post #54
aresant wrote: post #19

Nice viral night's project would be building a simple yourtaxreceipt.com website, reverse engineering those numbers and making a calculator.

Your wish is my command: http://www.incometaxreceipt.com

You've got a misplaced decimal in your calculations somewhere, as your numbers add up to less than 10% of what I put in.

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

#68

Post by jimbokun »

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…

This chart shows that the military, entitlements and interest on the debt account for over 80% of the budget. In other words, the things that are pretty much off limits when politicians discuss the budget.

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

#70

Post by stuaxo »

dkasper wrote: post #54
aresant wrote: post #19

Nice viral night's project would be building a simple yourtaxreceipt.com website, reverse engineering those numbers and making a calculator.

Your wish is my command: http://www.incometaxreceipt.com

Maybe some colour categorisation + colour coding so it's easy to see how much different bits cost. http://imgur.com/gxSxk

As you get more data you could maybe make it possible to drill down to get more detail too.

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