The White House has released a simple calculator showing where your federal tax dollars for 2010 were spent. It’s called Your 2010 Federal Taxpayer Receipt.
Using the calculator is pretty simple. Simply type in your Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes and federal income taxes paid in 2010, and the calculator will return results showing where your tax dollars were spent. Social Security taxes, naturally, go to pay for Social Security benefits. Similarly, Medicare taxes pay for Medicare benefits. The calculator then breaks down your federal income tax dollars by various federal programs for defense, health care, international aid, and science and technology programs. You can click the “Expand All Sub-Categories” link to reveal further details.
Very interesting, the top five federal expenses by percentage are:
- Defense at 26.3%
- Health care at 24.3%
- Job and Family Security at 21.9%
- Net interest payments at 7.4%, and
- Education and Job Training at 4.8%.
