“Would you like your receipt?”
It’s something you’re asked whenever you paid for groceries, a pair of socks, a bottle of windshield wiper fluid, etc. Almost every time you make a purchase, you can get a receipt documenting what you got for your money. And after Tax Day earlier this month, wouldn’t it be nice to get a receipt showing you just what your taxes paid for?
We thought so too. So, we worked with Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab to make a version of that happen. Find it here.
Just enter a few details into the calculator (it does not retain any personal information) and get insights into how the government spends your tax dollars thanks to data from the Office of Management and Budget and USAFacts analysis.
For example, the latest data has the average median household income at around $81,600. Here’s the tax receipt for someone who's employed and married with two children, filing for that amount in 2025. |
|
This receipt shows that $3,259 in taxes went to Social Security that year. Meanwhile, $239 went toward “aid to the disadvantaged.” Just what does that mean? Click on the line items for more details: you'll see that $61 went to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP), $2 went to refugee assistance. And that's just the beginning of the nuance in these receipts.
Of course, taxes are complicated. This calculator estimates payroll and income taxes but doesn’t account for tax credits, itemized deductions, or other adjustments that affect tax bills. For even more transparency, we explain how taxes are allocated below the receipt. Happy calculating!
|
|
Is the nation’s population growing or shrinking? |
|
There are two ways the nation’s population can change: natural population change (meaning births outnumbering deaths, or vice versa) and immigration (both to and from the US). So how has the population fluctuated over the past century? And how has it changed in your home state?
- The nation’s population grew by 1.78 million people between 2024 and 2025. For context, that’s more than the population of Chicago. That’s a 0.52% increase, which was mostly driven by net immigration.
- During that time, 1.26 million more people moved into the US than out. Meanwhile, 518,900 more people were born in the US than died.
|
|
- The US population has grown by 21.1% since 2000, an average annual increase of 0.85%. Between 2015 and 2025, it grew by 6.2%.
- The nation’s population has grown every year since 1900 with one exception: deaths from the Spanish flu in 1917 led to an overall population decline of 60,000 people by 2018. For more recent data, the population growth of 522,000 between 2020 and 2021 was the smallest of the 21st century.
- State population changes have the added factor of interstate migration. From 2024 to 2025, South Carolina’s population grew the most, percentage-wise, at 1.5%, or 80,000 people. Vermont ranked last, with its population declining 0.29%, or by 1,900 people.
- Texas gained the most residents overall (391,200), followed by Florida (196,700) and North Carolina (145,900). California lost 9,500 residents, the most of any state.
|
|
The tax data fixes we suggested to Congress |
|
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act changed tax returns for many Americans this year. However, the public won’t see any data on the bill’s effects on taxes for years. That’s because IRS tax statistics lag multiple years and when they are released, are not user friendly, and often don’t cover key topics. We created a report to evaluate IRS tax data challenges and recommend methods for timelier and easier-to-use data. We delivered it to Congress and think you should see it too. |
|
On Saturday, Secret Service agents stopped an armed man attempting to enter the White House Correspondents' Dinner. In 2024, the agency accounted for 3.3% of the DHS budget. While the DHS remains shutdown and unfunded since February, agency employees have been receiving paychecks since early April. Lori Chavez-DeRemer stepped down as the labor secretary last Monday. Get an overview on the Department of Labor. A Louisiana man killed eight children in a mass shooting before dying in a confrontation with police. Learn more about gun deaths nationwide and in your state. |
|
Gross domestic product (GDP) measures the value of goods and services a country or state produces — it's the sum of consumer spending, business investment, government spending, and net exports. “Real GDP” is adjusted to make it easier to compare the size of an economy over time without the effects of inflation.
GDP was $30.8 trillion in 2025. Real GDP rose 2.2% from a year prior.
|
|
|
|
|
