Where Do Your Tax Dollars Go?

Tax day is upon us, and courtesy of the National Priorities Project, we can get some sense of how our federal government is wasting our tax dollars on endless foreign wars as it stiffs priorites back home. Fiscal conservatives: Read this and weep.

Taxpayers can take stock of how the federal government spent their 2007 income tax dollars: over 40 percent went towards military spending, while education received just over 4 percent.

The median income family in the United States paid $2,628 in federal income taxes in 2007. Here is how that money was spent:

• Military — $1,109
• Health — $581
• Interest on Non-military Debt — $269
• Anti-Poverty Programs — $228
• Education, Training & Social Services — $115
• Government & Law Enforcement — $102
• Housing & Community Development — $88
• Environment, Energy & Science — $69
• Transportation, Commerce & Agriculture — $40
• International Affairs — $27

Want to know more? Check out these pages:

• Where Do Your Tax Dollars Go?
• Interactive Tax Chart: a breakdown of how the federal government spent your income taxes
• Trade-Offs: how your tax dollars could be spent differently in your state