I assume “Other purposes” is govt kickbacks to mining and gas companies 😬
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
Well, are they lying? It’s just true that welfare costs a lot of money (the “aged” category takes like half of my country’s taxes)
Yes, they were lying. We are not talking about the aged pension here.
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.
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This is just federal spending. Most educational spending is at the state level.
I don’t know much but I don’t think Australia works that way? Do they have “states” or some equivalent? Curiously asking.
Yeah we have 6 states. Australia is a federation like the US. There’s no equivalent to this form because we don’t have any state income taxes.
It’s still 8.6%, that’s quite a lot actually…
Yeah because that shit is totally not needed. AU and EU need to step up their shit. Iran and China sure are.
Except we don’t want to be the USA of the Asia pacific region.
You people live in a fantasy world where physical threats do not exist. The US is leading the way protecting Asia and Europe. The entire balkins would be under RU is it wasn’t for that spending.
The spending it’s needed and it’s EU/Asia doesn’t step up it’s game they’ll ultimately be a second tier power to the United States perpetually. Their call I guess 🤷♂️.
We know more about geo politics in the region than you do. And your drastic oversimplification does not actually result in a reasonable and coherent plan for peace in the Asia pacific region. Again I’ll say, your presence and commentary in this case is misinformed and incorrect.
👌
I mean sadly you’re right - people like to hate on our defense spending in the US, but who does the world look towards when Russia invades Ukraine? It sucks that it needs to be this way, but if we don’t have a strong deterrent to other countries then we’re just asking for problems. Look at how aggressive China and Russia have gotten recently, with China inching closer to an invasion of Taiwan. Who’s going to be laughing when the US is there to help Taiwan?
Also isn’t usa paying for other countrys military not sure if this is true
what’s your guess as to the percentage of US military spending compared to its tax revenue?
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 UK tax is deducted ‘at source’ by your employer for anybody employed. You have a personal tax code, which tells your employer how much tax to deduct and pay on you behalf.
You then have a number of allowances you can claim against if you are eligible, to reduce your tax, which issues you an updated tax code.
It is a very similar system in Australia. Must employees have their tax taken out when they are paid.
You can then claim deductions on certain things, and also make sure if you have multiple jobs you paid the correct tax.
Most people get some money back every year
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!
Sarcasm I hope?
if you can’t tell this is sarcasm, then you might not be best placed to be on the internet message boards, as you might misunderstand 99% of comments
No way!
I love that it helps you see how little of the welfare payments are going to the unemployed, since that’s the part that concerns people the most.
That’s a newer addition, when it first came out under a conservative Goverment, all welfare was grouped together.
Classic Conservative tactic.
“Evil, stupid, greedy-” stuffs pockets “-jobless, welfare scroungers!” stuffs pockets “Pensioners, vote for me to bring down our welfare spending!”
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 the US that would be a list of Congressmen and the Billionaires who own them.
Cries in American 😥
That’s slightly more than mildly interesting
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.
In my country government spending is mystery for tax payers.
It must be nice to live in a country where accountability is at least attempted. This shit would never work in Murica bc welll…. 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.
