After years of high unemployment and stagnant wages, much of the American population has learned to make do with less. Despite news of rather disappointing employment numbers and a declining labor force participation rate, at least someone is having a record year — the government.
The Monthly Treasury Statement released at the end of May showed the federal government’s total tax receipts for fiscal year 2014, some $1,934,919,000,000 worth. If you got lost in all of the zeroes, that is 1.94 trillion dollars, or an awful lot of taxes. Despite this, the government still ran a deficit of $436.38 billion in the first eight months of the fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1, 2013.
Where did all the money come from? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the bulk of the tax burden fell on individuals. The individual income tax netted the Treasury over $903 billion. After that came “Social Insurance and Retirement Receipts,” which groups together Social Security, unemployment insurance and other retirement taxes, and which accounted for $694 billion in revenue. Taken together these taxes took a sizable chunk out of Americans’ take-home earnings. The corporate income tax, while the third largest source of revenue, brought in a mere $165 billion.
With so much flowing from the worker to the government, perhaps the old song should be rewritten: Government, can you spare a dime?
(h/t CNS News)
