Infographic: Federal Tax Revenues

April 22nd, 2012
in econ_news

2 feedbacks »

Econintersect:  The CBO (Congressional Budget Office) has released some infographics on the details of theFederal government income and spending in 2011.  Here (after "Read more...") we post the presentation on the tax revenues received by the government.  Yesterday (21 April 2012) we presented the infographic for discretionary spending in fiscal 2011.  A manditory spending infographic was posted three days ago.

Tax revenues are lower as a percentage of GDP than they were twenty years ago:

Fed-gov-Revenues-2012-CAPTION-400

Follow up:

Here is the CBO statement about federal revenues:

The federal government took in $2.3 trillion in revenues in fiscal year 2011 (which ended on September 30, 2011), about $1.3 trillion less than it spent. Most of those revenues come from individual income taxes and the payroll taxes that support Social Security and Medicare's Hospital Insurance program.

Below is the full infographic. Click (twice) on graphic for a larger image.

Fed-gov-Revenues-2012-580

John Lounsbury

Source: CBO

Tags: cbo, congressional budget office, federal deficit, federal tax revenues, john lounsbury, national debt, u.s. national debt



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2 comments

  1. roger erickson says :
    On 04/23/12 @ 01:01

    An oxymoron wrapped in semantics parading as sophistry?

    A fiat currency issuer receives no "revenue" via clawback of issued fiat currency - that's the definition of fiat.

    "Taxes for revenue are obsolete."
    http://www.curiousevidence.com/(S(ogop55gtqjr2sx5megbfybk5))/samples.aspx?id=21

    “Tax Driven Money”
    http://moslereconomics.com/2009/10/07/tax-driven-money/

    [Fiat currency] Taxpayers do not fund anything. http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=9281

    Given no expected linkage between GDP & taxes (in our fiat currency regime), what's the point of the article? Why not correlate fiat taxes with their defined purpose - controlling inflation & avoiding deflation?

  2. Admin (Member) Email says :
    On 04/23/12 @ 02:47

    Editor's comment:

    This was a news article that simply documented the amount and sources of tax revenues received by the U.S. Treasury in 2011. The two referenced articles on U.S. government expenditures did the same - simply reported the amounts and the purpose.

    This was not an analysis article or an Op Ed on the purpose of taxation and no attempts were made to reference any such work.

    The comment by Roger Erickson addresses some of these issues and the references he gives are very worth reading.

    John Lounsbury