I assume “Other purposes” is govt kickbacks to mining and gas companies 😬
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!”
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.
That’s slightly more than mildly interesting
In the US that would be a list of Congressmen and the Billionaires who own them.
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.
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.
I strongly believe that this should be the standard everywhere. Unfortunately most governments won’t tell you this, because a few of them are busy building golden temples for their authoritarian leaders, and blowing half of it on cocaine while pretending it’s the immigrants’ faults
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
the UK do this as well
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.
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).
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.
