Death and Taxes 2015: A Visual Guide to Where Your Tax Dollars Go

Death and Taxes: A Visual Guide to Where Your Federal Tax Dollars Go

Make sure to click the image above to expand to view the full, massive version of this visualization, which shows the possible journey that each US tax dollar may go on.

Death and taxes are both inevitable, but at least the experience of death does not repeat itself every year.

This infographic shows the Discretionary Budget of the United States for 2015, and omits mandatory spending for programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In other words, it shows where the government’s priorities are with the money that it chooses to spend.

While fiscal 2015 has been already underway for awhile and the budgets for some departments may have been amended, the biggest benefit that this visualization brings is context. About 54% (including the entire left side) of the discretionary budget is military or national security related.

Seeing everything at once explains why some ultra rich Americans find ways to avoid paying the taxman.

Original graphic from: Graphicacy