KNOWING YOUR TAXES

Basically, everywhere there is tax. Ever pay day, a portion of your hard earned money goes to tax. When you buy goods and services, more often than not, there will be value added taxes. Owning a house means you have to pay taxes. Going to a museum or passing a road or dining out, entitles you to a tax. So, where do all these money go to?

According to the dictionary, taxes are financial charges that an individual or a taxpayer must pay to a state or any functional equivalent or an administrative division. Here, we can safely say that the taxes are collected by the state or the government. So what do they do with it? Why must we pay it?

Every year, in America, the federal government are able to accumulate trillions of dollars from taxpayers. All of these collected money from the wages, the products, and services serve as the fund of the government to keep the country running. The government is not a business that generates profit for only itself. The government is an entity that is tasked to govern, protect, and take care of its citizens. As such, the funds they need to use to govern, protect and take care of the people come from the people.

Every year, the government divides the total collected budget and distributes it to the sectors of the economy based on the needs of that sector. There are different kinds of divisions and sectors that receive the budget. It usually varies from country to country or from place to place.

In the US, for the fiscal year of 2013, it was divided among several divisions. The three major ones of which are the Social Security, the Medicare, Medicaid, and Children’s Health Insurance program (CHIP), and the Defense and International Security. Each of these sectors get one-fifth of the total budget. Another one-fifth was given to Safety net programs and Interest on the national debt. That leaves only one-fifth of the budget and this goes to a bunch more divisions namely Education, Transportation, Retirees and veterans, Science and medical research, Non-security international, and other sectors.

As you can see, that taxes that you pay, pay for you. Most of the development and maintenance in a nation is backed by your tax dollars. For babies to have vaccines, for road widening projects, for military and police security, for teachers, all of these are the designation of your taxes.

The taxes that we pay are crucial to the keeping the economy going so pay them proudly and make sure to entrust them to the people who will make sure that your taxes go where they need to go.