in Australia, when we pay taxes, we get a receipt. The receipt shows what our taxes were spent on
I assume "Other purposes" is govt kickbacks to mining and gas companies 😬
2142
Comments218View original on lemmy.world
I assume "Other purposes" is govt kickbacks to mining and gas companies 😬
Comparatively, in the US a $90k USD salary is about $10,415 in federal taxes.
However, my family healthcare is about $22k in premiums alone, for a high-deductible plan. This includes the employer-paid portion, as that is part of my total compensation package. Then there is the deductible ($5k) before the insurance starts paying out. And this is not including Medicare/SS taxes as well.
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!"
Indeed, especially since I am quite unconcerned about the Aged. They had their chance!
I wish that was kept completely isolated from the rest of the budget.
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
The US has a similar breakdown by % as this Australian one, except that what's called "welfare" in Australia is called "entitlements" in the US and makes up about 50% of the budget. Welfare in terms of the dole aka money given to "work shy bambots" makes up only about half of one percent.
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
They do?
Well shit, they do! Shame they don't actually tell you about it actively - as you said, they probably don't want most people to realise.
That welfare budget is a load of of shit, too. If you have a look at the actual breakdown, most goes on housing (read: private landlords) and(!) pensions.
Some crafty fucker in the dwp had the genius idea of splitting up state and civil service pensions, placing civil service pensions under the welfare group to make the welfare bill higher. Out of the welfare budget I think only 5% of that goes on the unemployed. Out of that 5% only 1% of that 5% figure goes to the long term unemployed. (Being on the dole >6months). Yet they only bang on shit the feckless and workshy...
Do you know where I could look for the actual breakdown - I'm not sure what to search for - would it be in the budget documents?
It must be so nice to see such a small bar for your defense spending.
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.
Ahh I see. Interesting! Thank you for clarifying.
It's still 8.6%, that's quite a lot actually...
Thats why they lost the Emu war...
See those emus try the same shit in the states and see how that goes
Just wait til we buy the govt some nuc subs in the coming years, then that bar gonna be a long boi
Except we kinda do need our military, especially with how cunty some point Australia's neighbours can be.
Yeah, don't trust them kiwis.
Should just nuke them now and get it over with honestly
We all know NZ is planning something
The West Island is welcome to join Aotearoa any time they like 😂
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 🤷♂️.
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
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’m not sure why your being downvoted, but it’s true. Allied countries of the U.S. do not have to put much towards their military budget do to being able to rely on the U.S.
The U.S. has a strong military presence in the Indo-pacific region and if they didn’t, surely some adversaries would have already been having their way.
It’s unfortunate it comes to this but that’s just the facts.
People think big military = war, while in fact it‘s the opposite.
what’s your guess as to the percentage of US military spending compared to its tax revenue?
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.
This wouldn't be truely democratic. It would rather be just like donations. Government spending works, because it's all out into the same basket. If it weren't, then rich taxpayers would move the movey to projects they want - and as would have very little old-age welfare, because they don't pay much taxes anymk6and every group in society would put the money into their projects.
If you can't see the obvious ways this would fail and/or be abused you should steer clear of any and all leadership positions.
Then everyone would just fund things 100% and 0% for everything else they deem not important, like education or roads.
That's the point. If people don't find it important, then it's not. Who else should decide if not the people?
Tax-deductible donations get you part way there.
There’s no point in having a government if you don’t let them decide how they spend and raise money
And if you get caught using a public service you didn't pay for, you get fined.
I also think people should not be allowed to vote unless they pay a flat poll tax. Otherwise it's a conflict of interest.
No, we should not have more barriers for the poor to vote actually
That would just reduce representation for low income people. That's an absolutely abhorrent idea.
Then have them pool their money together to get a vote.
What? Are you a teenager or something?
Either weak sarcasm or three Republicans stacked in a trenchcoat.
see this for a bit of education on the topic: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/oligarchs-against-democracy
Tell me you hate poor people without telling me you hate poor people.
This is a poor take, a few to vote is not the easy to go about this. Even owing taxes shouldn't bar someone from voting as voting is about being represented and everyone deserves representation. Even hardened criminals.
What happened to taxation without representation.
Many people aren't represented in America, e.g., DC, Peurto Rico, people who were in prison. Taxation without representation doesn't exist in America.
wanna elaborate on that?
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
Nice
Makes sense. I was already worried as soon as I saw "welfare" being bigger than "health".
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)
Still, in the long term it just improved the government's transparency
In the US that would be a list of Congressmen and the Billionaires who own them.
I think US would have a slightly smaller problem of NOT KNOWING WHERE THE FUCKING CASH IS
Can't be out of money if you don't know where the money is!
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!
Those goddamn commies need some freedumb!!!
Sarcasm I hope?
No way!
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
As mentioned by @[email protected] above:
This is pretty great. This should be happening everywhere.
I get one from the US gov. It looks like:
Military spending ======================== Other =
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_States_federal_budget
I love that tiny wee slice of corporate income tax compared to personal
Makes me want to calculate what goes where in my taxes based off these percentages, even if it’s not the most accurate
Makes me want to calculate what goes where in my taxes based off these percentages, even if it’s not the most accurate
Interesting that the Medicare has a note that the amount includes offsetting receipts like premiums.
My favorite thing about budget breakdowns in the US is how often pundits list defense spending as a percentage of GNP (gross national product) rather than as a percentage of the annual budget. Nothing else in the budget ever gets this kind of favorable treatment (which makes it appear smaller than it actually is) except sometimes debt service.
I don’t think that’s favorable treatment. Defense is 3%. Social Security is 5%. Medicaid and Medicare is also 5%.
We can afford our defense budget and make the country better for the common person by utilizing our funds more efficiently and/or moving to universal healthcare.
That’s what I thought. I bet that would raise understanding of federal purposes
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 Norway, we just get it prefilled based on automatically reported data, and it's delivered by default after a certain date - you can of course make changes up until then (and retroactively up to 3 years later).
It's prefilled in Australia too, we just go through and double check it's okay and then hit submit
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
That's slightly more than mildly interesting
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.
The data to create this is essentially public with budget bills right? It would just take building a percentage tree and categorizing them appropriately. I might look into how complex this would be to build.
its basically just proportioning out the nations budget against the amount of tax paid,assuming you had access to how much was spent where by category, it would be a peice of piss to make
Luckily they even do the categorization and calculate percentages for you!
https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function
I had no idea this existed; thanks for the share!
true but seeing how much goes to welfare might make republicans hit the roof. Everyones got that uncle that hates the poors.
Mind you the largest chunk of that is the elderly with the unemployed being one of the smallest ones. I'm very much in favour of both by the way.
If you think your taxes are too high then it's not because too much is going to welfare; it's because too much is going to tax breaks (which won't show up on a chart like this) for fossil fuel companies and the wealthy.
Most in Australia don't read where the money goes. Taxes aren't too bad (IMO) and the system is so easy that once you submit you don't really go back to see where it went. Or maybe I live in a bubble.
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.
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.
I mean, how else is the US going to afford to kill brown people in other countries to ensure rich white people can keep getting richer?
Such edge lol
Such worthless, juvenile commentary. Fucking Redditors.
Actively
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.
On one of those long ass printer papers with the tear off edges from the 80s.
Cries in American 😥
99% "defence"
1% other
Forgot the part where the government supports monopolies
Where is the 1 trillion on defense? /s
Australia hiding their full power so the emu's do not win again.
Everyone focuses on the emus. The kangaroos are the real threat because they've got pouches to hide their AR-15s illegally smuggled in from America.
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.
https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function
W government. We need this level of transparency from all governments.
USA:
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.
It’s also had negative cash flow for the last decade despite exponentially growing future obligations, and is currently trending towards insolvency by 2033. That’s what happens when you detach expenditures from taxes. So while boomers are simultaneously enjoying low taxes and reaping the benefits of social security, the fund will run out of money before it can have any chance of paying out for millennials. It’s not like the social security taxes I’m paying now are being “set aside” for me - they’re going directly into the welfare checks for my parents.
and what's wrong with "social services" having a negative cash flow? It's to help people in need, that's the entire purpose of taxes, to help the community/country. why do people think that any government systems should be positive cash flow like it's a business? LOL
Pretty sure they aren't upset at the government not turning a profit or taking care of people.
As someone who has spent a lot of their time around wanna be gen z tech bros, 99% of people have more in common with a damn antelope than gen z tech bros, especially the fanatically devoted ones. Those guys make some Jonestown people look like they
aren'tweren't in a cultThat is very interesting.
So what they do is take your tax and apportion it over by the Expense and Net Captial Investment Statement in Budget Paper 1 (usually Statement 6).
It's dead simple to do and really helps communicate where your money is going in general terms.
It was a Joe Hockey initiative.
As much as I dislike the man, credit where credit is due, I guess. Then again, it was probably the idea of some mid-level employee whose name will be lost in history.
I thought I read that his original intent was for the breakdown to be less detailed so as to obfuscate the true nature of welfare payments. Then some cheeky ATO staff delivered the more detailed version.
I think this is a pretty good idea, actually. While this kind of information is available in most western places, people usually can't be bothered to look it up and then have very weird ideas about what their taxes are probably spent on. This would at least help clear some things up.
Kinda wish we got this in the US. Then people will realize all the junk our taxes support and will also (likely) want to cut spending.
Only in a perfect world
Am American. If I saw a tax breakdown like this, with most of my dollars helping people instead of killing them, I would want to increase spending
50% Army and police
49% Monopoly "bailouts"
1% welfare
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
i’m assuming that “other purposes” are other categories that each are smaller than the ones listed. they are probably available on a website or something that gives the full list.
it would be nice if they had merged them together in wider but more informative categories though
In my country government spending is mystery for tax payers.
In most countries tbh
Nice to see our debt is being reduced. Meanwhile, the US is struggling to figure out how not to let their economy implode.
Un
fortunately paying the interest on your debt is not the same as paying down the actual (principle) debt. Unless there's something I'm not seeing.Edit: There was in fact something I wasn't seeing.
Derp, I just looked at bar chart breakdown, didn't see that.
They got is sorted mate. They printing more money.
Tories in the UK did this and obfuscated to their agenda
They showed "pensions" but that was only public sector worker pensions then added the universal state pension to the "benefits" section to claim we had a bloated benefits budget for scroungers despite them being the party of triple lock pension (linked to greater of wages, inflation and aribitary 2%)
In the US we just all know that it's bombs to kill the enemies of whoever the companies are allowed to sell them to, and fighter jets that don't work.
Mannnn... I wish we had this in the U.S. Unfortunately it would ruin a lot of the propaganda forced down our throats, disabling some talking points for our dumbass politicians.
They'd never give us something so comprehensive.
You can go here and get something pretty close to OP's posting.
I'm surprised so much money is going towards disability, what kind of stuff do they get?
Helpers, workers, special housing, apecial Beds and equipment. Some have 24/7 care.
Some need 24/7 care. Not sure what people in australia are getting.
Yeah that makes sense I guess, I just wasn't expecting it to be so much. But that's good that there's such a good support structure available.
What @hanni said. But they also split out the unemployment payment as the disability support payment. So it’s all the disabled pension too.
My guess is this is mostly support payments for people who are unable to work.
There is a whole department dedicated to the assessment and allocation of funding for the disabled under 65 y.o. If you're over 65 then it became the aged pension.
Australian support services can be quite broad. I know a lot of people with minor or self diagnosed issues that receive disability payments
We get this in the UK too 👍.
do we?? i don't think i've ever had one of these. do you have to apply for one or can you access it online?
I've seen it on the council tax statement but not otherwise.
You will get one with your council tax bill that will cover your local constituency. But I've never seen one for my tax as a whole.
That is a freaking sweet seal for the Australian Government! Id wear that on a shirt
Is this hard to do in practice? I would love to see a breakdown like this in the United States, and especially on a local level. What’s involved in getting this information? Where does someone even start to request something like this?
I assume it has to just be based on the proportion of budget spending and not actually your dollars tracked
This might sound dopey so forgive me, but couldn’t my dollars be tracked? Wouldn’t that be a good use for blockchain technology?
It would not be a good use for Blockchain technology. Besides the problem that your dollars are a fungible asset that don't have a physical object associated with it, as soon as you dollars get converted to another state, account, entity, whatever along with another thousands people's dollars you would lose the tracking. And ultimately even if you could achieve this it would then either all fall to one or two accounts so you would have the disheartening effect of seeing your entire annual contribution spent on something tedious like fuelling an aircraft carrier, or they would attempt to distribute it evenly in which case why not save all the effort and just track the average spend budgets? It's a solution looking for a problem here.
Ah, thank you for the explanation. I thought that money could be tracked even through conversion, but now I see how that wouldn’t be possible. It’s better suited for tracking bitcoin and the like, right?
Part of me wants to see that tedious spending of my money but I suppose it wouldn’t do me any good. An average breakdown would be nice, starting with my property taxes.
I wish we had this in Canada.
I wish we had it in New Zealand too. I get tired of people's hallucinations about tax.
It's cocaine and prostitutes because it's always cocaine and prostitutes.
Mildly interesting.
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
But remember, having all these private companies run the system is good, actually! The alternative is communism despite every other capitalist country in the world using the alternative!
This is very easy to find with a simple google search. Here's the year-to-date spending for 2023:
$1.01T social security
$673B health
$636B medicare
$623B income security
$610B defense
$494B net interest
$220B veteran benefits & services
$201B education, training, employment, and social services
$89B transportation
$74B community and regional development
$179B other
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but is the USA spending $1.3T on healthcare and it's still not free?
Yes.
Welcome to America! The greatest nation!
And another 2.5Trillion on the private side. Spend more on healthcare than any other country with the same or worse outcomes.
So the comment you're replying to was pretty much completely incorrect. Wonder if they'll revise their statement
Not only is it pretty common for a democracy to be pretty open about how they spend their tax budget, it's really common for these figures to be discussed when attacking America 🙄
Of course not, because it's much easier to just go "haha America dumb and bad"
Can't let the facts get in the way of that.
I mean, we spend more on defense than the next several nations combined and we haven't won a war in 80 years.
We spend more on healthcare than every other nation and it's still the most expensive healthcare system in the world.
We spend hundreds of billions on a welfare system that forces people on it to keep working until the day they die.
We throw out billions in kickbacks and "incentives" to billion dollar companies.
I could go on with the numerous, seemingly never ending problems with the US, but the point is that our system is indeed bad and dumb. Nothing we have works, and all of it is extremely over funded and under delivering. At this point, tearing it all up and starting again seems like the easier way to fix things, and getting to that point is never good
Social security is SELF-FUNDING, and even still lends money to the general fund. Yes, this a list of all government spending, but it isn't what your FICA payment goes towards. Military spending is #1 for that.
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
"correctly"
:)
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/interactive-data/taxday/
I paid twice that in taxes here in the USA and I still don't have proper health insurance. If I got sick, I would be destitute.
Transparency
I love that we have this
You pay 20 000 $ of taxes????!
Yes, from a salary of about 90k. However this is federal tax. We dont pay individual state taxes as well. Our sales tax is built into the price of goods. Our healthcare is also completely free.
Fuel and energy is also mining and has kickbacks.
Other purposees are maybe funding for the esa (european space agency)
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.
Based.
My local government (county and city) do this here in the US, it would be nice to see this on a state and federal level too though
You pay more in taxes than I earn in a year.
You have no clue how harshly we treat cattle eh snowflake?
lol this isn't actually true, I know because I live in aus and I have never seen anything like this