Where Your Federal Tax Dollars Go

According to OMB and CBO's published FY2025 outlay data, enter the federal income tax you paid last year. This tool splits it across the major federal spending categories using those FY2025 outlay shares, so you can see roughly how your contribution maps onto the federal budget.

Federal income tax paid ($)

Tip: this is on your IRS Form 1040, line 22 (“total tax”). Not sure? The median U.S. household pays roughly $12,000 in federal income tax.

How this works

The split is based on the federal government's FY2025 outlay shares across major OMB superfunctions (the same data behind the homepage budget chart). Your federal income tax is allocated proportionally to those shares. It is an illustrative breakdown of overall federal spending, not an exact accounting of your specific dollars: federal spending is funded by income tax, payroll tax, corporate tax, and borrowing together, so no single taxpayer's dollars are earmarked to a category. See the methodology for sources, and the guide on where federal money goes for the full picture.

Compiled by PlainSpending

Every figure on PlainSpending is computed directly from USASpending.gov award-transaction data, no number is typed in by an editor. This tool applies published OMB/CBO FY2025 outlay-share percentages (verified manually, not queried from this site's database) to the tax amount you enter, in your browser. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.