Obama rolls out tax-day 'receipt' website to show where your taxes go - but it makes it nearly impossible to find out how much the wealthy pay

Examples provided for $25k-$80k earners, but not for wealthy taxpayers

White House won't comment on failure to show massive tax burden of the 'one percent'

Watchdog says administration is hiding entitlement spending to make the Defense budget look bigger



The Obama administration's 'Federal Taxpayer Receipt' provides easy example calculations for middle-class earners, but nothing representing what the wealthy pay in taxes. Shown is the calculation for a married taxpayer who earns $80,000

The administration rolled out a 'tax receipt' web page on Monday so people can see where their taxes are going in state spending, coinciding with the deadline day for Americans to file their annual returns.

But while the White House made it easy to see how much -- or how little -- lower-income and middle-class earners pay to Uncle Sam, it made it difficult for ordinary taxpayers to learn how much the wealthy pay toward federal spending.

The online receipt was set up to itemized what Americans' income, Social Security and Medicare taxes actually pay for, broken down along a long list of categories. It also provides a handful of example calculations.

The White House's typical $80,000 earner who is married and filing jointly, for instance, pays $4,590 in federal income tax. Of that, more than $1,130 is devoted to national defense, another $1,030 for health care-related costs, and $792 to a category that includes food stamps, housing assistance and unemployment insurance.

The calculator makes it easy to see numbers associated with its $80,000 example, along with four others ranging in income down to $25,000.

But no examples are provided for upper-income earners, despite the President's frequent argument for a 'Buffett Rule' tax that would ensure Americans who make $1 million or more would pay at least 30 percent of their income to the federal government.

While taxpayers who make more than $80,000 per year can consult their own tax returns for the numbers required to operate the calculator, lower-income earners would need to know how to use several online tools in order to estimate those numbers for someone who earns dramatically more than they do.

The National Debt Clock in New York City showed a debt of about $14.4 trillion in July 2011. That number was more than $16.2 trillion as Tax Day 2013 arrived and Americans focused on how much they are paying each year for government spending

President Obama took credit in January for tax legislation that averted much of the damage from the so-called 'fiscal cliff,' but the national debt continues to climb and Republicans argue that the coming higher tax rates will stifle economic growth

It took MailOnline 35 minutes to calculate the taxes paid by a hypothetical $240,000 salaried earner who is married and filing taxes jointly with a spouse, using the same conditions as in the White House's example for an $80,000 earner.

That $240,000 salaried employee, would contribute toward every federal program more than 10 times what the $80,000 employee chips in, despite earning just three times as much money.

Under the same assumptions as the White House used, his or her $48,287 in federal income taxes would include $11,897 for national defense, $10,840 spent on health care-related costs, and $8,334 for the broad 'Job and Family Security' spending category.

The White House website doesn't provide a way to easily determine the tax burden for a given income level, which can depend on several factors including charitable giving, dependent children, tax-deferred savings, and unreimbursed job expenses.



'You deserve to know how your tax dollars are being spent,' wrote White House Director of Digital Content Colleen Curtis. But Americans don't seem to deserve to know how the government spends other taxpayers' contributions National Taxpayers Union spokesman Douglas Kellogg criticized the administration for treating entitlement programs as though they consumed less of Americans' overall tax obligations than defense spending

All the calculations provided by the White House describe national defense as the largest federal government spending program, although Social Security and Medicare entitlement spending is, collectively, larger. Those entitlement programs are administered through payroll taxes, which the White House calculator treats as separate from other tax dollars.



The Obama administration is attempting to 'cut data from the spending side, likely to avoid showing how much SS and Medicare take out of the budget,' National Taxpayers Union spokesman Douglas Kellogg told MailOnline, 'with the added bonus of [Department of] Defense spending appearing to be government's biggest expense.



'Workers and business owners who are paying Social Security and Medicare taxes right out of their paychecks are likely not interested in separating them into a special category and pretending they never happened,' Kellogg added.

White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest (L) wouldn't talk about why the administration made it so challenging for Americans to learn how much wealthy taxpayers contribute toward federal spending programs

MailOnline's $240,000 earning example presumed, as the White House's did, that the taxpayer set aside 5 per cent of income in a 401(k) or other qualifying retirement program and did not itemize deductions.

Americans collecting that much in salary do not qualify for the child tax credit applied to the examples on the White House website.

Obama spokesmen Joshua Earnest and Bobby Whithorne both declined to respond on the record to questions about why the administration made it a challenge for citizens to learn how much the rich are paying in taxes.



They also wouldn't comment on whether the calculator, now in its third year in one form or another, was only intended to help taxpayers generate information on the destinations of their own tax dollars.

But in an accompanying blog post. White House Director of Digital Content Colleen Curtis indicated that the administration didn't mean for ordinary Americans to learn about how the federal government spends the money it collects from taxpayers whom the president has excoriated for failing to 'pay their fair share.'

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'You deserve to know how your tax dollars are being spent,' Curtis wrote. She made no mention of learning how much taxes are collected from earners in other tax brackets, or how that money is applied to federal spending.

