Where Your 2015 Income Tax Dollars Went
The National Priorities Project (NPP) completed a study to uncover what the American taxpayer dollars went towards in 2015. According to the analysis, the $4.2 trillion dollar federal budget in 2015 was allocated to a variety of different areas such as defense, housing, and education. The NPP prepared their study by allocating how much was spent in each category and applying those percentages to the average American’s federal tax bill of $13,000.
Of the $13,000 average, the federal government spent:
- $3,728.92 on health programs (28.7%)
- $3,299.13 on the Pentagon and the military (25.4%)
- $1,776.06 on interest on the debt (13.7%)
- $1,040.93 on unemployment and labor programs (8%)
- $771.26 on veteran’s benefits (5%)
- $598.74 on food and agriculture programs (4.6%)
- $461.59 on education programs (3.6%)
- $377.50 on government expenses (2.9%)
- $250.03 on housing and community programs (1.9%)
- $207.68 on energy and environmental programs (1.6%)
- 194.29 on international affairs programs (1.5%)
- $150.68 on transportation funding (1.2%)
- $143.20 on science funding (1.1%)
For those who want more detailed information about their personal federal taxes paid, NPP has created a feature that allows taxpayers to see exactly how much of their own bill went to the areas shown above (broken out into more detail) by plugging their federal taxes paid amount into the NPP’s federal tax receipt calculator here: federal tax receipt calculator.