Your paystub (in the US) should state how exactly much is going to Medicare, unemployment, social security, disability, and general state and federal income for various programs (highway repair, workforce development, etc depending how your state uses income tax). If this is not on each of your paystubs, speak to your payroll department.
What I mean is: where it says “federal” – what federal programs specifically are my taxes going towards? This is a type of itemization that does not exist in the US. We just get rather generic buckets like “federal”, “state” etc. Medicare and Social Security get close.
I think the issue is that there would simply be too many different possible buckets, that it wouldn’t exactly be very helpful to you.
It’s easier to check and see that x% went to your federal taxes, than to see that 0.000001% went to this government program, and 0.0000126% went to this program, and…
Exactly what ArchRecord said. The main things for federal are Medicare, Social Security, and some disability (other disability is state). Other than that, there are so many federal programs that are such small percentages. Why do you think Congress takes over a year to approve the budget every year? NPR and PBS combined cost less than $7 per taxpayer per year, whereas military spending costs on average over $5000 per taxpayer per year (depending on income, and spread out over each paycheck). National forests cost the average tax payer $28 per year.
Do you know how many programs there are in the federal system? And then also in each individual state system? That paystub would be impossible, and as ArchRecord pointed out, out, it would be listed as 0.0000x% $0.000x for each stub, not yearly. But you can look up the federal budget and state budget and see what each of these programs cost and what they are for each tax bracket.
Your paystub (in the US) should state how exactly much is going to Medicare, unemployment, social security, disability, and general state and federal income for various programs (highway repair, workforce development, etc depending how your state uses income tax). If this is not on each of your paystubs, speak to your payroll department.
What I mean is: where it says “federal” – what federal programs specifically are my taxes going towards? This is a type of itemization that does not exist in the US. We just get rather generic buckets like “federal”, “state” etc. Medicare and Social Security get close.
I think the issue is that there would simply be too many different possible buckets, that it wouldn’t exactly be very helpful to you.
It’s easier to check and see that x% went to your federal taxes, than to see that 0.000001% went to this government program, and 0.0000126% went to this program, and…
Exactly what ArchRecord said. The main things for federal are Medicare, Social Security, and some disability (other disability is state). Other than that, there are so many federal programs that are such small percentages. Why do you think Congress takes over a year to approve the budget every year? NPR and PBS combined cost less than $7 per taxpayer per year, whereas military spending costs on average over $5000 per taxpayer per year (depending on income, and spread out over each paycheck). National forests cost the average tax payer $28 per year.
Do you know how many programs there are in the federal system? And then also in each individual state system? That paystub would be impossible, and as ArchRecord pointed out, out, it would be listed as 0.0000x% $0.000x for each stub, not yearly. But you can look up the federal budget and state budget and see what each of these programs cost and what they are for each tax bracket.