[HN Gopher] Tax Wrapped 2025
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Tax Wrapped 2025
Author : entrapi
Score : 81 points
Date : 2026-04-13 17:52 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (taxwrapped.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (taxwrapped.com)
| cr125rider wrote:
| This is awesome!
|
| It worked great on mobile
| ssl-3 wrote:
| It got stuck on desktop.
|
| It worked fine until it got to the point where it showed me how
| many tax dollars I contributed in 2025, and had a little popup
| fade in (and disappear again) that said "Swipe to continue"
|
| That was the end of the road for me. It was impossible to
| proceed further.
|
| (These UI non-elements can all go die in a fire together.)
| jjulius wrote:
| >It was impossible to proceed further.
|
| Does your mouse have a scroll wheel?
| ssl-3 wrote:
| It does.
|
| But my mouse's scroll wheel is not a swipey-thing.
| jjulius wrote:
| But at least it moves things from "impossible" to
| "possible"! :)
| ssl-3 wrote:
| It's possible that I will never try visiting that website
| again. ;)
| DeltaCoast wrote:
| Very cool! But I think there's a cap on social security, it said
| I paid much more towards that than I did.
| clayhacks wrote:
| There definitely is a cap. I believe once you make more than
| $176k you stop being taxed for that
| connicpu wrote:
| Yep the cap was $176,100 for 2025
| welldoneator wrote:
| I _really_ enjoyed this and love the concept! Scrolling on
| desktop was a little odd, but worked really well otherwise.
|
| Content wise it's pretty eye opening just how much of our tax
| dollars go to things like social security, medicare and interest.
| Seeing it laid out in the exact dollar amount affecting me is
| pretty powerful stuff. I wonder how much voting habits would
| change if this was a common way to communicate the cost of
| federal programs. I had moments where I was thinking "why are we
| not spending more on education!" as a result as well.
|
| Awesome work!
| coredog64 wrote:
| I'm at work, so just a few seconds to chime in: Educational
| spending is primarily sourced from the states. If you were to
| sum state spending on education, you would come up with another
| eye-watering pile of money. It's just that this money is
| usually sourced from property taxes and sales taxes and so
| doesn't show up on a "Here's how your income taxes were spent"
| analysis.
| ghaff wrote:
| In fact, a lot of educational spending is local. I think
| something like 65% (maybe more) of my town's property taxes
| go to K-12 education with a decent chunk of the rest going to
| emergency services. There are various grants at the state and
| federal levels but it's mostly local.
| Cider9986 wrote:
| Another cool site somewhat similar to this is Wealth, shown to
| scale[1]
|
| [1] https://wealth.ronnycoste.com/
| atonse wrote:
| This is a really cool way to actually educate people about taxes
| and government spending.
|
| It's crazy that our interest payments are so high. I remember
| when Clinton actually balanced the budget (no deficit), I was a
| teenager and couldn't care less. But I only a few years ago
| started to understand how much that sounds like Sci-Fi in this
| day and age.
| mkhalil wrote:
| So we spent more on interest for the deficit than we spent on the
| doubling the combined spending on all of the following:
|
| transportation government operations natural resources community
| development education & social services agriculture international
| affairs science & space and energy
|
| ...anxiety rises.
| wrs wrote:
| Editorially, it might be good to point out that government money
| moves in both directions. I spent $X on interest payments on the
| national debt, but I also _received_ $Y of those interest
| payments if I have any Treasuries in my portfolio. Similarly, I
| might be receiving Social Security or Medicare benefits.
|
| Maybe expand this with a second section estimating what you're
| receiving from the government?
| wyre wrote:
| You exist in a bubble if you think a meaningful population of
| the target audience of this app have any meaningful amount of
| treasuries in their portfolio, or any portfolio at all.
|
| I don't think the website is lacking in describing things that
| we get from the government.
| someguydave wrote:
| The federal government has become a machine to transfer the
| income of working people to boomers
| foobiekr wrote:
| This is very cool but completely wrong for high earners.
| slopinthebag wrote:
| Kind of insane y'all pay more in taxes for healthcare than I do,
| yet I get it for free...
| jldugger wrote:
| Same reason doctors from around the world move to the US.
| Steve6 wrote:
| This is amazing and depressing. Most people will never get any
| benefit from this spending, definitely not of equal value to what
| you contributed/lost/spent. No matter where you fall on the
| political spectrum you should be disappointed by the federal
| governments reckless spending. Yet it never gets better. Likely
| never will.
|
| I see other people recommending taxes that are missed, but with
| people being taxed from every angle it's impossible to accurately
| measure tax burden. That's by design.
|
| "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death
| and taxes."
|
| But... Even death does not save you from taxes.
| woodruffw wrote:
| The visualization shows that, at many income brackets, the
| majority of one's taxes go squarely into the social safety net.
| You can make an intelligible argument about waste, etc., but to
| say that Americans _don 't_ benefit from social security,
| medicaid, etc. seems facially incorrect.
| Steve6 wrote:
| Even if you ignore ALL other tax spending (which is a huge
| ask) the best possible outcome is $1 in = $1 out. That breaks
| even at best. The government isn't creating value it's just
| moving money around.
|
| Now add in other wasteful spending. Add in inefficiencies.
| Add in the deficit. Add in inflation and money printing. Add
| changing administrations with their own goals. Add wars and
| other foreign affairs. Add in spying on citizens. Add in back
| door deals with giant corporations and insider trading.
|
| Saying "If you ignore all the bad parts, the government is
| beneficial" is not a strong argument.
|
| There are SOME people who benefit from the social safety net.
| But as a whole it's largely a drain on everyone else.
| woodruffw wrote:
| That's not really how taxes work. Some of your mine (and
| mine) is essentially front-loaded into today's social
| safety net, ensuring that the poor, infirm, etc. are
| afforded certain minimums in terms of quality of life.
|
| The $1 I put into that doesn't "come back" to me in cash; I
| get it in the form of a society that has fewer people going
| hungry, dying from treatable conditions, etc. This is where
| the argument around efficiency, waste, etc. can be made,
| but waxing about inflation, etc. has essentially nothing to
| do with the matter.
| craftkiller wrote:
| My top category was social security, followed by medicare. If I
| live long enough, I'll benefit from both of these. But
| regardless, these are great things to put our money towards.
| I'd much rather lose a couple tens of thousands per year than
| have our elderly dying homeless and hungry.
|
| The next category was military which I think we can all agree
| that US spends too much on the military but it would be silly
| to claim that I don't benefit from the pax americana.
|
| The next category was interest on debt... Which yeah... not
| stoked about that.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Most of the money goes to Social Security, Medicare, and the
| military. I don't currently benefit from the first two, but I
| will if I live long enough. (Reports of SS's demise are
| exaggerated. The worst case when it runs out of money is that
| benefits are cut, not that it disappears entirely.) The benefit
| of the military is debatable but I would argue that there
| definitely is a benefit, although we spend a lot more than we
| really need to.
| pimlottc wrote:
| I was half-afraid this would start with a form prompting you to
| upload your tax return :P
| ncr100 wrote:
| I wonder what the various billionaires pay in federal tax.
|
| I know there's not just one type of billionaire, but many, And I
| wonder if any are more or less significant than each other to the
| Nations financial Health.
| voidfunc wrote:
| We need to kill of social security. Its an absolute black hole of
| money and I will never see back anywhere close to the amount I
| paid in.
| onelesd wrote:
| we need to kill off fire departments. my house has never burned
| down and i will never get my money's worth.
| voidfunc wrote:
| This is a strawman. Look up how utterly fucked social
| security is and tell me with a straight face it is a good
| system and you'll get value from it.
| wat10000 wrote:
| The most fucked thing about SS is that the tax is capped.
| Somebody struggling on a minimum wage job is paying the
| full rate, while I get to stop paying partway through the
| year. Remove the cap and it starts to look quite a bit
| healthier.
| rl3 wrote:
| Sure, but what replaces it?
|
| You're talking a catastrophic level of pain and suffering
| if there's nothing to take its place.
| Rohinator wrote:
| Love this - hoping this goes viral and people actually start
| talking about the deficit
| ed_balls wrote:
| >Just like credit cards, the national debt has interest payments
| the government needs to pay.
|
| Something I learned a few years ago: debt is to national debt
| what a chair is to an electric chair[1]. Government has to
| increase monetary base when economy grows. National debt is a
| good thing, where credit cards are just awful.
|
| > Interest doesn't buy anything. It's the price of having spent
| money we didn't have.
|
| And where does interest go? WHERE DOES INTEREST GO? <insert goose
| chase meme>
|
| [1] or java to javascript :)
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| It says I contributed money to Humanitarian assistance, but is
| that based on the budget or based on what was actually spent?
| Because there's been something of a recent Constitutional problem
| with budget money not actually being spent on its intended
| targets.
| rconti wrote:
| Another Riley Walz project? Awesome! :)
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(page generated 2026-04-13 23:00 UTC)