![[OC] I made a calculator that approximates how much of your income tax went towards different government spending programs (defense, medicare, etc).](https://www.byteseu.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/vupui5zzoemf1-1536x758.png "[OC] I made a calculator that approximates how much of your income tax went towards different government spending programs (defense, medicare, etc).")
I had a lot of fun working on this little calculator project over the weekend. You can check it out at www.howmanytaxes.com to see what your contribution might look like. The calculation is pretty simple and doesn't account for anything outside of federal income tax, so take it with a grain of salt. Heres the formula: Your Contribution = (Your Income Tax Paid / Total Federal Income Tax Dollars) x Programs Tax Dollars. All data was sourced from official government websites ( www.usaspending.gov/agency, federal marginal tax brackets) I'd love any insight, ideas for expansion, or if you like it or hate it!
Posted by Greasyidiot
8 Comments
Pretty neat, would be nice to just have them all listed out with values instead of having to select each program.
Great idea! I think this would be very informative to people if you can get it all in one graphic like another commenter said. Maybe even make several income tiers in addition to the calculator. People are really bad at comparing millions and billions etc – if I was in office I would report all budget items as per capita. Getting a personalized readout would be even better. Comparing one years budget to another would be interesting.
In Australia they send this to you in the mail. I suppose if they did it here in the US it would cause a lot more people to wonder if we might be spending a tad too much on our ability to kill citizens of other nations and not enough on keeping that of our own alive and well and maybe not in as much debt.
This is pretty cool and I have often wondered how my taxes are spent. I think other countries like Australia actually gives you a breakdown of your taxes. A treemap or some other visualization where I can see the entire distribution would be nice.
One question. Does social security and medicare include the dedicated FICA taxes you pay as well?
Aren’t your calculations for SS and Medicare off cause they cap out at a certain income level and the formula you use here in your post shows it scaling linearly forever.
Can you also show how much was borrowed on my behalf, then spent on the program as well? When we have a 28% budget deficit, it’s not just that I paid $xyz to program abc, but also $qrs was borrowed on my behalf for abc
This sounds like a joke but send this to Jon Stewart cause he was talking wanting something like this on his podcast recently
I tried to enter in my income information on my laptop, but the location to enter is always black.