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by toomanybeersies 1944 days ago
Here in Australia, after my tax return is lodged, I receive an income tax receipt with a breakdown of where my tax dollars went.

It's only broken down by category though (e.g. Health, Defence, Education), except for Welfare, which has subcategories (e.g. Aged, Disability, etc).

There's an example and further explanation here on the ATO website: https://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Lodging-your-tax-return/I...

There's a certain sense of satisfaction in being able to see in slightly more real terms what my tax is being spent on.

2 comments

What a nice idea, wish we had something like this in Germany - not digging on websites but a tax receipt.
I’ve gotten this before in the mail as a US resident. It’s quite interesting regardless of your thoughts on the budget
There's a certain sense of satisfaction in being able to see in slightly more real terms what my tax is being spent on.

But it's misleading, perhaps deliberately so. The money is not being spent on "Health" but on the "Health department". What percentage of that money actually delivers health, and what merely funds the bureaucracy?

Here in the UK only about a third of defence spending goes on the armed forces themselves. Another third goes on service pensions, which is fine, but running the MoD itself is a full third of the budget! It wouldn’t surprise me if the same was true of the NHS.