Tracing your taxes

I’ve argued that we could have a much more pragmatic debate about taxes and federal spending if it was easy to see where our income goes. That way, we wouldn’t have to dig around for fancy graphs or arcane debates to understand how lite our tax burden is.  In that vein, USA Today, the master of colorful graphics, posseses perhaps the best tax tool yet; just enter your income, and a unique chart will generate that shows your total tax bill, effective tax rate this year, effective tax rate historically, inflation-adjusted income, total tax bill, and the breakdown of that total bill.  This chart isn’t completely accurate for more complex situations (mortgage, children, dual-income, etc.), but it’s the best tool out there for knowing how taxes affect you.  Until this information is incorporated into our pay stubs, this graphic is as good as it gets.

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