A receipt for the big picture

You pay taxes.
You should know
what they pay for.

Trillions are hard to picture. A hundred dollars isn't. Unfold the receipt, meet the programs, and decide what matters to you.

FY 2025 · Actual federal outlays · Public data

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THE AMERICAN RECEIPT

UNITED STATES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

FISCAL YEAR ENDED SEPTEMBER 30, 2025

Break down every

SPENDING CATEGORY · TAP TO EXPLOREAMOUNT

TOTAL SPENDING$100.00

This receipt uses an accessible consumer-brand design; it is not a bill or a statement of your personal tax liability. Based on the Treasury's FY 2025 net outlays of $7.010 trillion. Negative lines are offsets that reduce total outlays. Parent-category totals and program examples must not be added together. This is a spending allocation, not a literal tracing of your taxes.

Put it in perspective

Defense vs. food assistance

For every $100 the federal government spent in FY 2025:

$13.08National defense

$1.45SNAP food assistance

About nine times as much went to national defense as to SNAP.

Sources: Treasury and USDA.

Make your own comparison

Two lines. One scale.

Compare verified spending categories and SNAP. Each amount is a share of the same $100 of federal outlays.

First itemSecond item

SNAP is included within broader spending totals. Comparing categories does not mean they are independent or additive.

Go beyond the label

What's inside a category?

Tap any spending category to explore familiar programs. Tap a program to read two plain-English sentences about what it does and who it serves.

Curiosity over certainty.

This project is designed to help people ask better questions about public spending—not to tell them which programs to support.

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Sources & methodology

The amounts in the receipt are Treasury FY 2025 federal outlays by function, expressed as shares of total net federal outlays ($7,009,992 million). This includes spending financed by borrowing, so the $100 represents $100 of spending—not necessarily $100 of taxes paid. Displayed values are rounded individually; adding the displayed cents may differ slightly from $100.

U.S. Treasury, Combined Statement, FY 2025 — Outlays by Function (parent categories).
USDA Economic Research Service, FY 2025 nutrition assistance spending (SNAP $101.7 billion).

Program descriptions explain examples of activities within broad areas; they are not a complete subfunction ledger. Some examples cross budget functions or funding agencies. No unverified program-level dollar figures are displayed. A future release will add fully reconciled program-specific figures and additional comparisons. The site is an independent educational project, not an official U.S. government website.

You pay taxes.You should knowwhat they pay for.

THE AMERICAN RECEIPT

Sources & methodology

You pay taxes.
You should know
what they pay for.