Visual Capitalist April 6, 2024
Where Does One U.S. Tax Dollar Go?
Come tax season, a common refrain is: “what do my taxes even pay for?”
To answer that question, we visualized U.S. federal government spending by function, referencing expenditure to a single federal tax dollar.
Data is for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2023 from the U.S. Bureau of the Fiscal Service. Total spending amounts are converted to cents on the dollar and percentages, to show where one tax dollar goes.
Major Areas of U.S. Government Spending
Social security is the government’s single largest expense and where 22% of tax dollars go. Signed into law in 1935, the program was to insure against the “hazards and vicissitudes of life.” In practice, it meant...
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