While there’s an increasingly heated debate in Congress concerning where and how tax dollars should be spent in the future, there’s a clear paper trail showing where your dollars went during the past year. Using data directly from the US government, Data Lab and USAspending.gov have broken down the major federal government expenditures by category in 2021 (the smallest categories are not pictured but can be found here). The chart below reveals where the majority of your income taxes are spent:
Spending by Main Source Categories and Agency in 2021
If you want to learn more about where your money is going, check out USAspending.gov. [This article was originally published on The Simple Dollar in November 2020. It was updated and rewritten in December, 2021.]
