Where Do Your Tax Dollars Go?

When you pay taxes, they go to pay for a lot of state and federal ventures. And, unfortunately, you don’t really get too much of a say in how those tax dollars are spent. In many cases, you’ll never even know.

Of course, that’s not true for all departments. Some are actually quite open about what they’re doing with your dollars. Case in point: The United States Department of Defense, which posts all of its major contracts on its website.

Just last month, the Department of Defense received over $31 billion, and we think you’d be interested to hear about some of the things it did with your hard-earned money.  

Air Force Testing Projects

Around $15 million went to two defense contractors: Leidos Holdings and Ball Corp. Their plans, collectively, are to spend money doing complex testing involving lasers and other high-tech tools to create better defenses and weapons for our air force.

An Aircraft Carrier

Another defense contractor, Huntington Ingalls, received over $4 billion to create a new nuclear aircraft carrier. That carrier will be called the USS John F. Kennedy and is expected to be completed within the next decade. And, if you think that’s expensive, one like it has already been designed, and two more are expected to follow.

Replenishment Pharmaceuticals

The largest amount of money the Department of Defense has given as of late is a whopping $6.1 billion, awarded to McKesson. This company is going to be providing replenishment pharmaceuticals to the Tricare Pharmacy, which provides medications to people in the service, people who are retired from it, and their dependents.

So, as you can see, your tax dollars are put to use. Whether you think it’s good use or not doesn’t really matter. The fact remains that you have to pay taxes. To make sure that you still have money left over to spend on things you believe in, hire the right accountant!