A couple years ago I constructed a graph of what percentage of my total tax expenditure went where, and I decided to do the same thing for 2009. My tax situation is a bit different now, as since my last chart I’ve had kids and I purchased a significant amount of land from my parents. This shows out of all the taxes that I keep track of, which agency gets how much of my total taxes. This includes taxes on income in 2009 (modified by refunds received in 2010 for the 2009 tax year), taxes on assets, and sales taxes that I kept track of. This does not include other taxes on expenditures like gas tax, cable tax, meals tax, or sales tax where I didn’t enter the sales tax amount as an itemized split into my finance program (since I’m not worried about tracking it that closely). I would have preferred a pie chart, as it’s more customary for this kind of thing, but it’s hard to show a negative percentage in there very well. Total appears to not be 100.00% due to rounding.
![[2009 Tax Expenditure Graph]](https://files.cooperjr.name/blog-media/2010/2009taxes.jpeg)
Are you sure about that Federal income line? In particular are you including the money deducted from your paychecks? I would have thought that as a computer scientist you would make far too much to have refundable tax credits exceeding your tax burden.
Yes, I am sure. The “Making Work Pay” credit is refundable, and made my total refund more than the sum of my withholdings (but not by much). Pretty crazy. Presumably in 2011 when the credit no longer applies, my federal tax will go positive again.
Basically, our Congress really likes to give money to people who have babies and own their own house, plus they really like giving money out to everyone for the last couple years. I probably would even agree that given what I make, it’s not fair for me to be paying no (or negative) income tax. But, I’ll take the money if they really want to give it to me.