Monday, April 18, 2011

T*Bux 2010

T*Bux is a term I coined and have been calculating for the past 2 years, which is: the per capita amount each income tax payer in the U.S. owes on one trillion dollars of federal government debt.

The number I have for tax returns in 2010 is 141 million. So T*Bux (2010) is: $1 trillion/141 million = $7092.

I have two different figures for returns in 2009 (132 million and 144 million), so I'll have to figure out what the inconsistencies mean. Before I was using the smaller figure, so I cannot compare this year with prior years. Sometimes IRS data can be confusing.

A rule of thumb, variations in figures notwithstanding, is that for every trillion in government expenditures, taxpayers owe around $7000 per person. for a total federal government debt of over $14 trillion, that's would be $100,000 each. For bank bailouts or national health care packages that run just under a $trillion a pop, that would be somewhere around $6000 per tax filer.

Now, what was down quite a bit in 2010, my initial look at the data is indicating--is tax revenues, which are at $2.16 trillion, though this IRS sheet suggests it might be even lower. That is down from $2.3T last year, and $2.5T as a general running average.

The big news today was that the outlook of the AAA credit rating of the Federal Government was downgraded from "stable" to "negative." That riled the stock market a little. My guess is it will recover tomorrow.

The bottom line is: with increasing federal debt and declining federal revenues, in 2010 zero hour drew a little closer.