You paid taxes. What did you buy?
The Policy Receipt
Most political arguments would get 30% less stupid if people could see the receipt. You paid taxes. What did you buy? I’m building a policy receipt: income + location → estimated federal/state/local spending, translated into normal human categories.
A tax receipt that translates spending categories into an itemized bill, with federal/state/local split.
OMB, CBO, USAspending, IRS SOI, and state/city budgets.
A receipt prints from the top; each spending line expands into a proportional bar.
People can understand a receipt faster than a 300-page budget PDF.
A receipt that translates taxes into the stuff government actually buys.
Most political arguments would get 30% less stupid if everyone could see the receipt. You paid taxes. What did you buy? Not vibes. Not slogans. Just an estimated bill: healthcare, defense, schools, interest, transit, police, parks, housing — federal, state, and local split out like a normal receipt.
A literal printed receipt where every spending category is an itemized line. Users can enter income/location; the card estimates federal, state, and local allocation.
People do not understand budgets because budgets are published as tables, PDFs, agencies, and abstractions. A receipt is emotionally and visually familiar. It makes the tradeoffs legible without forcing a partisan frame.
Fields: Outlays by budget function/category, fiscal year, mandatory/discretionary/interest shares; use federal outlay shares, not agency press-release numbers.
Use: Allocate estimated federal tax dollars into spending categories.
Fields: Award amounts, agencies, object classes, recipient locations, spending categories.
Use: Optional drilldown: where federal money goes geographically and by agency.
Fields: Income tax liability distribution, AGI bands, filing status assumptions.
Use: Estimate rough federal income tax paid by AGI / filing status; keep as simplified estimator, not tax advice. Separate income tax from payroll tax.
Fields: Revenue and expenditure categories by state/local government.
Use: Add location-specific state/local receipt layers.
- 1.Start with federal only. Ask for income and filing status assumptions or use example incomes: $50k, $100k, $250k.
- 2.Estimate federal income tax using current brackets, standard deduction assumptions, and payroll tax if included. Clearly separate income tax vs payroll tax vs total federal tax.
- 3.Allocate estimated tax dollars by OMB/CBO outlay shares: health, Social Security, income security, defense, interest, education, transportation, etc.
- 4.Second layer: add state and city examples, starting with NY/NYC, CA/SF/LA, TX/Austin, DC.
- 5.Use a disclaimer: not personalized tax advice; receipt is a proportional allocation of public budgets.
Main X card: the receipt
A receipt for a $100k earner: line items for healthcare, Social Security, defense, interest, education, transportation, safety net, etc.
Everyone understands receipts. It turns ideology into a concrete bill.
Federal vs state vs local stack
Three receipts side by side showing what changes when you move from NYC to Texas to California.
Local identity drives sharing and arguments.
Where $1 goes
A simple dollar bill split into color-coded cents for each category.
Extremely screenshot-friendly and easy to explain.
- 1.Frame 1: ‘You paid taxes. What did you buy?’ on blank receipt paper.
- 2.Frame 2: income and location stamp onto the top of the receipt.
- 3.Frame 3: total estimated tax prints.
- 4.Frame 4: category lines print one by one with proportional bars.
- 5.Frame 5: federal/state/local tabs slide apart.
- 6.Frame 6: final card: ‘not ideology — the bill, translated.’
- 1.Tax incidence is complicated. Do not pretend the estimate is exact.
- 2.Payroll taxes and income taxes fund different things; separate them clearly if included.
- 3.Federal outlays in a year are not exactly funded by that year’s tax dollars because of borrowing/deficits.
- 4.State/local categories are not perfectly comparable across jurisdictions.
- 1.Build a federal-only receipt first using OMB/CBO outlay shares and example incomes.
- 2.Then add 3 location examples: NYC, California, Texas/Florida no-income-tax state.
- 3.Then turn it into a calculator for cfindex.org.
- 4.Then add share cards: ‘my $X tax receipt in NYC.’
- 1.The hard part is not the chart. It is being honest about estimates, tax incidence, and local/federal splits.
- 2.The best version lets people compare: defense, healthcare, schools, interest, transit, police, parks, housing, debt service.
- 3.This is what civic education should feel like: boring PDFs turned into something you can understand in 20 seconds.
- •OMB federal budget tables
- •CBO budget/economic data
- •USAspending
- •state and city budgets
- •IRS SOI tax statistics
This should probably become a cfindex.org tool.
You paid taxes. What did you buy?
Most political arguments would get 30% less stupid if people could see the receipt.