63% of Americans Feel They Don’t Get What They Pay For From Their Taxes

As the saying goes, there are only a few guarantees in life, one of which is that you will forever pay taxes. Americans have been paying taxes even before we threw a bunch of tea into the Boston Harbor, which means we have a lot of experience with the good and bad of paying monthly taxes to a government body. 

Today, taxes account for a good chunk of our paychecks, and the hope is that this money will better our lives in a meaningful way. Whether it’s through Social Security, Medicare, national defense, or the roads in our states, the question remains whether we feel we’re truly getting our money’s worth. 

Tax Payment Dissatisfaction 

According to a 2024 study from TaxFoundation.org, more than 63% of Americans believe that the money they pay in taxes exceeds what they think is the “value received” from government services. Considering that during the 2024 fiscal year, the IRS collected more than $5.1 trillion in tax revenue, it begs the question of why Americans feel this way when so much money is available. 

This is less of an argument about how complicated the tax code is or even whether we pay too much in taxes, which is an argument for a different day. The reality is that only 21% of Americans, a small number overall, believe they are getting exactly what they pay for from the government. In comparison, a measly 4% believe they get “excess value” from their taxes. 

All of this leads directly to the question of why Americans are feeling this way. 

Reasons for Tax Dissatisfaction 

Wasteful Spending

As we’re discovering in the federal government with DOGE, there are areas where the federal government is spending wastefully. Government inefficiency or politicians’ personal agendas have created an atmosphere where billions of dollars go to projects that are either only helping a small number of Americans or not enough Americans to make a major difference. 

Think of something like the “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska, one of the more famous modern examples of a $398 million project that was earmarked by Congress and would have only served around 50 Americans. This is wasteful spending, better known as the “pork barrel” spending that Americans despise. 

Lack of Visible Benefits

When it comes to things like Social Security, there are two sides to the coin regarding the taxes we pay. On the one hand, some Americans firmly believe in paying for entitlement programs such as Social Security to help those who want to live a good life but don’t have the money to do so. 

However, there are also those, especially younger generations, who are frustrated paying taxes into a program they won’t be able to take advantage of for decades. The same goes for defense spending, of which America spends more than most of its allies combined. 

At the current time, when America is mostly enjoying peace around the world, the hundreds of billions spent on defense have little visible benefit. In this regard, Americans don’t understand the payoff until the worst-case scenario happens and America finds itself in another military conflict. 

Better yet, there are Americans in New York who might appreciate tax dollars for building or improving new subway stations, but a farmer in rural Kansas would not benefit even if his tax dollars helped fund these projects. 

Major Federal Spending Categories

It goes without saying, and it makes sense that most Americans can’t understand a $6 trillion budget for America. This is especially true when the budget is around 2,000 pages, and most Americans will never take the time to read such a thing. 

This ties back to Social Security, which often accounts for around $1 trillion (or more) of the federal tax budget and is the largest single item in the budget. This program is vital, and more than 70 million Americans benefit from it. Still, for the couple hundred million Americans who don’t, the cost versus benefit right now for those paying into the system but not yielding immediate benefits is hard to grasp. 

The same argument can be said for healthcare with programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which support more than 140 million Americans. Even food stamps and the SNAP program are tricky for Americans not taking advantage of the program to grasp, and these entitlement efforts have long created a political divide between those who want their tax dollars to help everyone versus those who don’t want to pay for anyone other than themselves. 

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