Bernard linked to these spreadsheets on the Treasury website, which include the details of the spending allocated in the budget.
So using this and plugging in the basic income tax rates from the IRD site, I’ve put together this simple spreadsheet to implement the idea I mentioned here last week, breaking the total tax paid amount down by government department:
At the top are the usual suspects: Transport, Health and Education. Towards the bottom some of the smaller and lesser known departments: Archives, Women’s Affairs, and the Serious Fraud Office.
By default it shows the breakdown for the average household income ($67,973 as at 30 June 2007, according to Statistics New Zealand).
If you like you can also download a copy and enter your own income at the top to see how much tax you paid and how it will be spent.
There are probably lots of things that I could add into this – for example, at the moment it doesn’t account for Kiwisaver, or Working For Families. If somebody wants to have a hack at the underlying spreadsheet drop me a line and I’ll invite you in as an editor in Google Docs.
What do you think? Surprised by the results?
Astonished that the IRD’s budget is so large.
More details here:
http://www.ird.govt.nz/aboutir/reports/annual-report/annual-report-2007/part-5/ar-2007-part5-statements.html#performance
And $40 million in just one year on consultants and contractors doing “Projects and information technology”:
http://www.ird.govt.nz/aboutir/reports/annual-report/annual-report-2007/additional-info/ar-2007-additional-information-widepage.html#fig-42
That’s 2.6 x the previous years expenditure in the same category.
It would be interesting to see the difference in taxes paid between other countries as well. I don’t imagine that the same salary would be taxed the same amount in America, or spent in the same areas of government. Very useful though, I wonder how other parties would prioritize spending in those categories…
You should throw this up on its own url – it might get a life of its own if the media pick up on it. People will love to see where the government is spending their individual taxes!
Along the same vein as Kiwisaver and WfF… you need to account for the tax the average household pays thanks to GST, ciggies, petrol, alcohol, etc.
P.S. Is Govt spending next year really going to be $93billion!?!?!?
Imagine if we could vote online as to how our Tax money is actually distributed.
Business could vote on their company Tax & GST distribution and Families could vote on their personal Tax and GST component distribution.
It would give a good indicator to the requirements of both.
Dictators wouldn’t like the idea I’m sure.
Thanks for the interesting article.
The Ministry of Justice revenues over $3 Billion Dollars last year. Your $212 does not equate. It would more like $1,000 per person. And, although these figures would be hard to calculate on a broad spectrum, there is no justification as to what we at the IRD spend your money on. I’ll let you into a secret though, the IRD, Ministries of Transport & Justice all belong as private corporations with Her Majesty the Queen in Right of New Zealand. It all boils down to who owns who. You keep on paying like obedient TAX PAYERS and we’ll keep on spending like crazy. Cheers, and Bottoms UP!