This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.
This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?
Just post some stuff and don't spam.
I assume "Other purposes" is govt kickbacks to mining and gas companies π¬
I love that it helps you see how little of the welfare payments are going to the unemployed, since thatβs the part that concerns people the most.
Thatβs a newer addition, when it first came out under a conservative Goverment, all welfare was grouped together.
Uk government tried this a few yrs ago trying to spin the welfare part as work shy bambots then it came out that the lions share was pension pots that took up most of it with the teachers pensions being the one the media focused on
Always liked this because it helps people see to some extent where money is going.
I know the UK and Portugal do this as well. It was especially interesting in the UK during the Brexit years because you could see a tiny piece of that pie chart with EU contributions, almost saying "this is how little of our money is going to Europe", didn't do any good in the end but hey, still great info to have that all detailed
One thing to note about this breakdown is that it wasn't legislated with good intention but it was implemented in a very malicious compliance way that completely counteracted the original intention.
This receipt was legislated by the conservative party in Australia under Tony Abbott, the surface level intention was to "show where people's tax dollars are spent". However the underlying intention was to show welfare spending as a huge category that totally eclipsed all other spending in order to demonize welfare, particularly unemployment welfare. In order to build public support for rolling back that spending.
However when the letter was implemented, the welfare category was further broken down as you see here, completely working against the narrative that the government at the time was trying to spin (that unemployment welfare particularly was a huge drain on society).
Instead it shows that boomers are the real drain on society
I strongly believe that this should be the standard everywhere. Unfortunately most governments won't tell you this, because a few of them are busy building golden temples for their authoritarian leaders, and blowing half of it on cocaine while pretending it's the immigrants' faults
I agree with you 100% that this should be standard everywhere, but here's the thing... this information is readily available already.
At least in the US. But just like with most thing, it takes citizens a willingness to show the tiniest bit of effort to find that information.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58888
This is but one of many sites which show a breakdown of where our money in the US goes. Having one that breaks down each person's personal contribution would be especially interesting, but a percent is a percent so if 20% of our money collectively goes to X, then 20% of what your paid as an individual will also go to X.
sometimes accessibility and user experience is more important than "its available if you look for it.: 99% of people don't really have time, they have families, jobs, some leisure, cooking, paying bills, visiting family. etc. etc. So it should be easy and the FACT that it isn't easy is purposeful whereas the Australian system is purposefully easy.
I don't disagree with your sentiment, but again, it IS easy. It took me less than 10 seconds to find the link I provided. Sure, make it even easier still by including it with every tax return, but let's not kid ourselves - this shit is incredibly easy but average taxpayers just don't want to bother.
I would argue average taxpayers don't know it exists and a ton of them, particularly older ones have a very hard time with technology. I've had to show my mother in law how to get a url from her phone to her desk top, I've explained what the read mode means in Firefox, and numerous other things. Easy for you doesn't mean easy for everyone.
Not only this, I think this should be selectable by taxpayers before they pay taxes so they can customize the amount that goes to each category. This would be the true democratic way of doing it. So, for example, based on your salary you need to pay 20k in taxes. You'd then select how much you want to go into Transportation, Healthcare, defense, education, etc.
This would quickly force the government agencies to work for their money.
Tax-deductible donations get you part way there.
It must be so nice to see such a small bar for your defense spending.
It's still 8.6%, that's quite a lot actually...
Eww you guys are getting close to spending more on education than the military. Slippery slope.
It gets worse-
They spell defense with a c!
Fun fact: in the United States you can request this same sort of receipt. It's slightly different, but all you have to do is request it, and they can show you exactly how many brown people they shot, or godless communists they've brought democracy to with your taxes!
In the US they'd have to print it Landscape in order to have room for the Military bar.
Cries in American π₯
Another thing that's great about aussie tax.. you can fill it out yourself, it's very easy, all online, and it takes a very short time. They also explain every question in the form and have lots of materials that you can read. For me, I finish it each year in about 10 minutes, and never think about it again.
In the US that would be a list of Congressmen and the Billionaires who own them.
I think something like this would make U.S. citizens feel better about taxes in general, since it can sometimes feel like you're throwing a large portion of your hard-earned money away.
In my country government spending is mystery for tax payers.
That's slightly more than mildly interesting
It must be nice to live in a country where accountability is at least attempted. This shit would never work in Murica bc welllβ¦. corruption.
In America, our government organizations can't pass an audit
Most can. The DoD has consistently failed for years. Yet we still keep ballooning their budget.
USA:
Defense: |||||||| |||||||| |||||||| |||||||| |||||||| |||||||| ||||||||
Boomer Welfare: |||||||| |||||||| |||||||| |||||||| ||||||||
Interest on Debt: |||||||| ||||||||
Everything Else: |
As yet, social security is still a SELF-FUNDING program that lends money to the general fund. I'm gen-x, not a boomer. Stop buying into generational warfare. We have more in common with working class boomers than with gen Z tech bros.
Problem is in the US since so much of that is put into private sector hands we'd need to gather data on those costs outside of the taxes to put together a proper picture.
The US doesn't give you a nice little letter, but you can go to https://usafacts.org/visualizations/the-big-picture/ to see something similar.
This would be neat to see for the US
Health wouldn't be on there at all because fuck em
Defense would be spelled correctly and be so large that it would need to be on its own section, because the chart scale would distort things so badly that everything else would look like a sliver above zero
Education would be smaller than your immigration
Welfare, depending on the administration, would likely be some derogatory categorization for each group just to piss off their base
"other" would be the best biggest thing after Defense and provide no details, because it would be corporate subsidies and that would look bad
Defense would be spelled correctly
Hey, I take offence to that!
Color me surprised
What is color? Do you mean colour?
Sorry that's not a word, it has a red squiggly under it if I try to use it
You can request this in most countries, especially here in Canada. It's cool that the Aussie government makes it more transparent and accessible though. The "other purposes" seems a bit sussy-baka, though.
There is no excuse for any country not to do this TBH. The math is really easy and uses already available information: take the year's total federal spending for different things, specifically in the form of percentages of the year's total tax revenue (hopefully the government has been keeping track of what they've been using the money for) and multiply by the total taxes paid by a specific person and you get exactly how much of their money went to what. This assumes every person's tax revenue is treated the same which I'm pretty sure is at least mostly the case in every country.
If they release the national spending percentages (which they should) then it'd be pretty easy for individuals to calculate these themselves.
Well there is a reason: they spend it on bullshit and they don't want tax payers to know