November 11, 2014

Visualizing how my personal tax was spent

I received my tax assessment yesterday. On the last page was the bar chart shown below, which visualizes where my "personal tax was spent, based on 2014-15 Budget estimates" (according to the caption). To the right of each bar is a dollar amount (obscured) that represents the portion of my taxes spent in each category.

Where my "personal tax was spent, based on 2014-15 Budget estimates".
































I've not seen this chart on previous years' tax assessments. It provides a useful indication of where the Federal government (expects) to spend our personal taxes.

The chart is simple but effective. Sorting from largest to smallest is a good choice, as is the breakdown of the Welfare budget into sub-categories. I don't believe the colours encode any information. I'm glad they didn't use a (3D) pie chart which so often blights public reports of budget expenditure.

I'll be interested to see what charts accompany my tax assessment next year. I'd be interested to see some historical information such as budgeted versus actual expenditure, or the change in amount of tax paid.