April 3, 2008
MSNBC on Government Spending
How the government spends your taxes
By John W. Schoen, MSNBC
If you haven't already, you'll soon sit down and sign your tax return—the annual accounting of what you owe the government. Like many tax filers, you're probably asking yourself: Just where does my money go when the government gets its hands on it?
Alas, it's not as simple a question as it may seem. For those of you who have trouble balancing your checkbook, imagine trying to keep track of where $4.1 trillion goes. That's what was spent on your behalf at all levels of federal state and local government last year.
Even with armies of accountants and auditors, it's hard to know with certainty exactly where your taxes ended up. For starters, you pay taxes based on a calendar year; the government spends it based on a fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Even if the calendars matched up, the journey your tax dollars embark on depends a lot on things like how much you make, how you spend it and where you live.
Still, while the Bush administration tax cuts and the rise of the Alternative Minimum Tax have shifted the burden of who pays what, the size of the average tax bite on all of us hasn't changed much, according to Gerald Prante, a senior economist at the Tax Foundation.
The burden of government overall has remained relatively flat since 1970," he said.
