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You are here: Home / Economics / Tax Policy / Tax Receipt

Tax Receipt

by @heymistermix.com|  October 3, 201011:13 am| 22 Comments

This post is in: Tax Policy

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The taxpayer receipt has been making the rounds of blogs this week. The example used in the white paper shows that most of the taxes for someone earning the US median income goes to Medicare and Social Security.

That’s true, but it’s interesting to play around with the do-it-yourself version and use the mean family income (instead of the median personal income). As income goes up, the percentage of income that goes to federal income tax versus FICA goes up, which makes entitlements a smaller piece of the pie. And as entitlements get smaller, the amount alloted to defense and debt get bigger.

For someone making the mean household income of around $60K, filing as married with one child, around $3,000 of total tax burden goes to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Almost as much ($2,900) goes to military and police, and $500 goes to debt service. I wonder how the average American is going to react to that.

(Here’s a big image of the whole calculation, and here’s the paycheck calculator that I used.)

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22Comments

  1. 1.

    NobodySpecial

    October 3, 2010 at 11:15 am

    They won’t, because that’s the part they’ll never see in our liberal media.

  2. 2.

    beltane

    October 3, 2010 at 11:26 am

    I like John Cole’s idea of putting the total cost of health insurance (employer’s + employee’s share) on everyone’s pay statement. That would be the real eye opener. For example, the amount of money we give to Blue Cross in a single month would pay for a new hardwood floor in our bedroom. Imagine that.

  3. 3.

    arguingwithsignposts

    October 3, 2010 at 11:27 am

    Funny, because I was arguing with McArgleBargle the other day when she suggested that the Wealthy ™ were getting ripped off by Soc. Sec. and Medicare because they got the least return on their investment as compared with the poor.

    ETA: Because I can’t be assed to look at that stupid calculator, do they factor in employer contributions? Because IIRC, employers contribute an equivalent share on top of employee withholdings for some taxes. IANACPA.

  4. 4.

    mistermix

    October 3, 2010 at 11:34 am

    @arguingwithsignposts: When I made the calculation, I didn’t factor in employer’s share of FICA. That would make a big difference, obviously, but a “receipt” is for something you paid, not your employer.

  5. 5.

    beltane

    October 3, 2010 at 11:34 am

    @arguingwithsignposts: McMegan is just that that she is still able to walk down the street without encountering a sea of homeless and starving 80 year olds. What’s the fun in being rich if you don’t have a mob of malnourished, scab covered, rag clothed poor people to make you feel better about yourself? I imagine McMegan has a hard time enjoying her dinner unless she is able to watch images of children dying of starvation.

  6. 6.

    Southern Beale

    October 3, 2010 at 11:44 am

    A shameless blogwhore but since we’re talking taxes, this seems very pertinent to the discussion:

    Dude You HAVE No Fire Protection

  7. 7.

    Comrade Jake

    October 3, 2010 at 11:55 am

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    Funny, because I was arguing with McArgleBargle the other day when she suggested that the Wealthy™ were getting ripped off by Soc. Sec. and Medicare because they got the least return on their investment as compared with the poor.

    Leave it to McMegan to complain about the rich not getting as good an ROI as the poor for Social Security. Jesus.

  8. 8.

    Alwhite

    October 3, 2010 at 11:58 am

    @Southern Beale:

    I saw that and thought “Thank Spaghetti someone had the courage to do away with so-solist fire departments!” Now if we can get the same for police protection instituted we can renew America’s inexorable march to the sort of Galtian paridise that is Solmolia.

  9. 9.

    Stillwater

    October 3, 2010 at 12:01 pm

    @mistermix: but a “receipt” is for something you paid, not your employer.

    In the case of payroll related taxes, the employer burden is shifted by them onto the employee, whose effective pay-rate decreases accordingly. So, even though it’s not technically paid by the employee, the burden of the tax is born by the employee.

  10. 10.

    Wiesman

    October 3, 2010 at 12:02 pm

    I’m having a hard time understanding the items marked “Debt” on the receipt.

    It seems that if you add all the numbers (including interest from Debt) it should add up to the two provided numbers (income tax + FICA) plus the borrowing in your name. But it doesn’t.

    Can someone explain what I don’t understand here?

  11. 11.

    Keith

    October 3, 2010 at 12:15 pm

    I’m still trying to figure out how much of my tax dollars go towards educating and providing medical care to illegal immigrants. I have a friend who is hardcore anti-illegal-immigration, and I have a standing offer to him whereby I will cut him a check for whatever part of his tax burden goes towards services illegal aliens get so long as he shuts the fuck up about it. Maybe the idea can scale up…I’d have no problem springing for 5-10 people to shut the fuck up about immigration just for the cost of paying some of their taxes.

  12. 12.

    Moses2317

    October 3, 2010 at 12:27 pm

    It is rare that I agree with something proposed by Third Way, but this is an interesting idea. It would force Republicans to try to translate their constant refrain that government is “evil” into a concrete proposal as to what programs they would cut.

    Personally, I find every program on the list valuable, and think the questions should focus on whether specific government programs should be reformed, shrunk, or expanded and how we improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the government programs we have. Unfortunately, Republicans, tea partiers, and their billionaire sugar daddies seem more interested in villifying government rather than making sure we get the best bang for our buck on the government spending that is needed.

    Winning Progressive

  13. 13.

    Downpuppy

    October 3, 2010 at 12:27 pm

    Only the geniuses at Third Way would produce “Receipts” where the items add up to 60% of the total.

    Naturally, between debt financing & fiscal vs calendar years, there’s no single way to calc these things, but for chrissake, if I get a receipt for $5400 I want the items in the damn sack to add to $5400, not $3000.

    Can you even imagine the screaming if this crap went live?

  14. 14.

    Barney

    October 3, 2010 at 12:29 pm

    The main problem with the ‘example’ in the Third Way paper is that they leave out a huge part of military spending. They list ‘Military Personnel’ exenditure, but that’s a small part of what is spent on the military – compare it with the 2011 budget proposals in the New York Times.

    Put the $34,140 into the PaycheckCity calculator for a married couple, and you get $2512 in federal taxes, and $2612 in social security+Medicare. Put that (slightly less than the $5,400 in the Third Way paper – don’t know why) into the “Your Tax Receipt” calculator, and DoD spending comes out at $984, and Afghanistan+Iraq $240. The Third Way ignore most military spending, without a word of explanation. But they list pretty much everything else.

  15. 15.

    300baud

    October 3, 2010 at 12:42 pm

    @Stillwater:

    I certainly agree that people should start thinking about more than the stuff that’s reported on their pay stub. Employer-side taxes, employer health care payments, employer retirement contributions.

    But I’m not sure the stub is the right place to start that particular crusade, just because it jacks up the apparent cost of government. If they were to include things like that, we’d have to be sure to include any sort of counterbalacing tax credits.

    In the receipt, I think they should also make sure to include any subsidies. E.g., our giant subsidies to homeowners through the mortgage interest tax credit.

  16. 16.

    Bill Murray

    October 3, 2010 at 2:56 pm

    so they left most of the taxes paid for by dedicated taxes except for FICA; they broke up military spending into at least 3 different groups (personnel, and two types of veteran’s benefits) and seem to have left out quite a bit of total defense spending. Is Third Way part of Friedman’s radical center movement or what?

  17. 17.

    MD Rackham

    October 3, 2010 at 3:10 pm

    @Stillwater: That’s how it should work, but if the employer FICA contribution were to suddenly be eliminated, I seriously doubt that employees would see any increase in what they take home.

  18. 18.

    b-psycho

    October 3, 2010 at 3:24 pm

    @Moses2317:

    Personally, I find every program on the list valuable

    …did you happen to notice that the wars and the DEA are on that list?

  19. 19.

    catclub

    October 3, 2010 at 5:18 pm

    @Downpuppy:
    It seems to me that given the deficit, we get _more_ than
    the taxes paid:
    So it should be $5000 in government services for $3500
    paid in taxes – then the additional debt of $1500 included as well. (Rough numbers only).

    But having it not add up still makes no sense, I (think that I)
    agree with that.

    On the other hand – having it not add up implies loss to the Elders of Zion who run everything anyway. (Do I have to write I am joking?)

  20. 20.

    catclub

    October 3, 2010 at 5:25 pm

    @Keith:
    I saw a so-called calculation of how much II’s were costing –
    nay bankrupting, the US.

    It was was amazing in its mixing of one-time costs, and ongoing annual costs, plus in its ignoring all contributions paid into the US treasury by II’s.

    Part of the total number it came up with was the amount it would cost to deport every single II.

    So, the first number they tell you will be a total lie.

  21. 21.

    Downpuppy

    October 3, 2010 at 5:31 pm

    You’re not taking on a share of the debt based on this years taxes. Each year’s receipts, and each year’s expenditures, are giant sprawling agglomerations, connected to each other in thousands of small points but overall not so much.

    The fringe looking issues – timing, debt, making it balance – eventually come back to the heart of what makes the thing so stoopid: Taxes aren’t a grocery store. You can’t tie your payments to specific expenditures, and anyone who tries to explain it to the little people that way is being an elitist twit who secretly yearns to be on the catfood commissin.

  22. 22.

    Bill H

    October 4, 2010 at 1:07 am

    It overlooks the small issue that Social Security is not part of federal tax revenue. Social Security is a separate cash flow stream that cannot be incorporated into the tax revenue stream in any meaningful way. Combining the two and averaging produces gibberish.

    That chart is sort of like saying that my neighbor has $1000 income and pays $600 rent and that I have $2000 income and pay $300 rent, and so in combination we pay 30% of our income in rent. That’s technically true, but it’s totally irrelevant since we do not combine either our incomes or our rent payments.

    The fact that the government is spending money collected from Social Security payments is irrelevant. It is borrowing that money from Social Security and will someday need to pay it back. If I lend my neighbor some money to help him pay his rent, that changes absolutely nothing other than that he now owes me some money.

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