Home / Where the Fuck Did My Taxes Go (April 2026)

Imagine you agree to give your teenage kid $30k a year to live on during college. He comes home for Thanksgiving and asks for more money, saying housing, food, and transport are getting more expensive. He makes a convincing argument and you consider giving him more money. But first you check his bank statement, where you see that his biggest expense, by far, is paying interest on his credit card debt. He's spending over 10 times more on interest than education.

I imagine you'd be furious. I would be. And I wouldn't just be mad that he's wasting money paying interest - I'd be mad that he asked for more money without being transparent about the fact that paying interest on his debt was his biggest expense. I'd sit my kid down and make it clear that his top priority should be getting out of debt and there's no way I'm giving him more money until he proves that he's capable of managing his finances more responsibly.

Our government's biggest expense, by far, is paying interest on our national debt. But it's not really our government's biggest expense. It's yours. You're making that interest payment every time you pay taxes out of your paycheck, you pay taxes on purchases, you pay taxes on sales, and you pay taxes on your property.

Politicians on both sides are racking up the debt, so they aren't too incentivized to make it a big deal when it comes to talking about our national priorities and the need to increase taxes and government revenue. They prefer to tell you they need the money for education, defense or social services, because just like with your kid, it sounds at lot better than asking for money to throw away on interest.

Don't just take my word for it. You can find out where the fuck your taxes go here: wherethefuckdidmytaxesgo.com