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I love this
Edit: I also think taxes should be itemized on US paystubs, like is done in many civilized nations.
One reason so many in the US hate taxes automatically is because it is a black hole into which we have no insights (on paystubs).
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.
As long as they have to itemize military spending honestly and can't call it all "defense".
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.
What national government anywhere in the world specifies the federal programs paid for by taxes on an employee pay stub?
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.
What do you mean by itemized taxes? I can already see where taxes are going on my paystub: health, dental, vision, federal tax, state tax, Medicare, and social security. I can also see how much is going to 401k.
More itemized than that? I wouldn't really want to see where the federal and state taxes are being used simply because I think that would be way too many items.
And how are those "federal" ones spent? That's what I mean. I would like to see what percentage of my taxes go to what specific federal program, for example. Not just a vague "federal" item.
So you want the thousands of federal programs that your federal taxes go towards listed on every paycheck? You have any idea how long that list would be?
Edit: are there certain categories you want it broken down into? I feel like we can look up the federal budget to see where our money is going. Having 100s of line items where a tiny fraction of our money goes towards seems excessive.
how do you know how much you're supposed to be taking home?
You get a gross and net pay. The net pay shows how much you take home. But the taxes are taken out as big generalistic chunks, like Federal and State. You don't get further itemization.
I think everyone is misunderstanding what you are saying. Maybe I am too.
I believe you want to know what your tax dollars are being spent on? Like how much to make bombs vs space probes vs education?
If so, interesting idea. But you probably don't want to know.
Yes, this. There is no further itemization on taxes beyond generic "federal", "state", etc.
I've occasionally looked this up over the years and calculated it all manually. Not too hard to access federal budget numbers...
I just found this tool where you can put in your tax $ and it will break it down for you: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/interactive-data/taxday/
By law you do. You just aren’t accessing your payroll portal online to look it up. It will be there. It’s literally required for filling out your taxes in April
I'm talking about knowing what specific tax dollars go towards. E.g. was my $100 in federal taxes earmarked for military or something else? There is no such itemization that I am aware of.
In the U.S., the IRS collects all federal taxes and deposits them in the Treasury. The President submits a proposed annual budget and Congress spends entirely too much time appropriating the money from the Treasury to fund those parts of the budget it approves. There is no way to know what your tax dollars went to specifically because they go into a comingled fund that pays for all federal appropriations.