How much of your year goes to federal taxes?

• Income tax: 2026 federal brackets and standard deduction for your filing status, minus the $2,200 child tax credit per child (up to $1,700 of it paid back as a refund) and the Earned Income Tax Credit, assuming you qualify. Credits can push income tax below zero. No other deductions or credits.
• State income tax: each state's 2026 brackets, standard deduction, exemptions and personal credits (Tax Foundation), on your pay. Head of household uses the married brackets, which leans low. Alabama, Missouri and Oregon let you subtract some federal tax; that's included, at the most generous level published. Washington's tax is on capital gains, not pay, so it's $0 here. State tax credits like a state EITC aren't counted.
• City or county tax: the rate you enter, applied to your state taxable pay.
• Sales tax: your state's average combined state and local rate, July 2026 (Tax Foundation), times the spending you enter. It's an average, so your town's rate may differ.
• Property tax: the yearly amount you enter.
• Other states: your same pay run through every state's income tax (and average sales tax, if that's on). City, county and property taxes are left out.
• Payroll tax: your 6.2% Social Security share on wages up to $184,500, 1.45% Medicare, and 0.9% more on wages over $200,000 ($250,000 married). Couples are treated as one earner.
• Hours: yearly federal tax ÷ hourly pay. A workday is your weekly hours ÷ 5. The calendar counts weekdays from January 1, 2026, without holidays.
• Spending: fiscal 2025 net outlays by budget function and program, $7.01 trillion in all, from Treasury's final Monthly Treasury Statement (Tables 5 and 9). Negative lines are money coming back in, like Medicare premiums.
• Borrowing: the fiscal 2025 deficit, $1.78 trillion, on $5.23 trillion of revenue.
• Inflation: buying power lost = 1 − (1 + raise) ÷ (1 + inflation), times your yearly hours. CPI-U rose 3.4% in the 12 months to July 2026. CPI is an average, so you can set your own rate. Economists disagree on how much inflation comes from deficits, so it's shown separately.
• Look up any program: every account line in Treasury's Table 5, net of money the program takes back in, with transfers between government accounts left out so nothing counts twice. Your time is your hours for federal spending × that line's share of the $7.01 trillion.
• What others pay: for each income, the average federal income tax that people at that income actually paid in 2022 (the latest final IRS year), as a share of their income, counting everyone, including people who owed nothing. Payroll tax is added only on the typical share of that income that's wages (high incomes are mostly investments). Social Security tax stops at $184,500 of wages per person. Medicare's extra 0.9% starts at $250,000. The 3.8% investment-income tax is left out. All of this leans low on purpose. Hours = tax ÷ (income ÷ 2,080 work hours).
• History: each category's share of all federal spending, 2005 to 2025, from the White House budget office.
• Not counted: gas, tobacco and other excise taxes, tariffs, corporate tax, investment income, and state spending (coming next). Estimates only; not tax advice.

Sources: IRS 2026 brackets · SSA wage base · Tax Foundation 2026 state income tax rates · Tax Foundation midyear 2026 sales tax rates · Treasury Monthly Treasury Statement, Sept 2025 · BLS weekly earnings, April to June 2026 · BLS CPI · IRS Statistics of Income, Tables 1.1 and 1.4, 2022 · Budget office Historical Table 3.1