“Get your billions back, America,” the tax preparer H&R Block urges in television advertisements.

What many taxpayers may not realize is that they already do. When it comes to the government, taxing is often just another name for spending.

There are tax credits and tax deductions; tax exclusions and tax exemptions; tax deferrals and tax reductions; tax discharges and tax preferences, all of which put money in people’s wallets rather than take it out.

There is one critical difference between tax-related payouts, however, and those that come directly from the federal budget: Spending channeled through the tax code tends to overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans.

According to an analysis of $340 billion in tax subsidies for housing, education, retirement and savings in 2013, the top 1 percent received about $95 billion, more than the $90 billion received by the bottom 80 percent combined, said the Corporation for Enterprise Development, a nonprofit organization that seeks to build assets for low- and moderate-income families.