The average American pays $524,625 in federal and state income taxes, property taxes, sales tax, and taxes on major purchases by the time they retire.
With tax day here, it’s time to revisit a shocking study that revealed some unpleasant math for the American taxpayer.
It added up the total – all in, with real dollars – for how much average Americans pay in taxes over the course of their lifetime.
The result: $524,625, or more than half a million dollars in federal and state income taxes, property taxes, sales tax, and taxes on major purchases sent to the government by the time you retire.
That’s a sobering thought for anyone who stared at tax forms this April or for anyone who has had to worry about their own family budget.
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For all your hard work, all those complicated forms, and a lifetime of effort and sacrifice, it adds up to a half million dollars you’ll never get to spend.
And it gets even worse when you realize what you could have spent it on.
The median price of a home sold last year in the United States was $419,200. If you add that to the average price of a brand-new car ($49,740), your lifetime of taxes could have bought a brand-new house and two new cars, with thousands left over.
The average cost of raising a child from birth to age 18 is estimated at $237,500, so your lifetime of taxes could more than cover that… twice. Adding that total could also more than double the average family retirement savings in the U.S. – about $334,000.
And if that money had been invested in the stock market instead, your tax dollars would have nearly tripled in value to about $1.5 million, thanks to compound interest and an annual S&P 500 rate of return (minus inflation) of 6.78%.
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Now, take a look at how your tax money is being spent instead.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), at the direction of Elon Musk, has exposed and canceled an estimated 7,300 contracts and 9,300 grants from the federal government, with a total estimated savings of about $140 billion to date.
As it happens, some of those grants and contracts are almost exactly equal to your lifetime total of $524,000 – so we can see just what our lifetime of work is worth to Washington, D.C.
DOGE recently canceled a $523,000 grant for “small-scale avocado farmers in Honduras” who “currently struggle to get their avocados to market,” and another $522,000 grant to small-scale farmers in Ahuachapan, El Salvador to “increase incomes and promote sustainable agriculture and food security.”
Another grant for $509,000 would have funded online trainings and exchanges in 10 Latin American countries for “sports-based training programs using fútbol callejero (street soccer) to strengthen leadership among disadvantaged youth.” An additional $509,000 was earmarked to “reduce lead exposure from occupational sources” in India. Not Indiana – India.
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A terminated contract for $527,000 was intended for “senior leadership teambuilding, coaching, and travel with Communication Institute International” for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the food stamp program.
That’s how your lifetime of honest, diligent tax paying is spent – on just one grant for one year of a project you likely don’t support.
Think of your grandfather’s swollen knuckles and cracked skin from a lifetime of labor; the crooked back of your grandmother from shouldering the load.
The taxes from their lifetime of calluses are being callously spent in Washington without a second thought.
And these are only a few needles in a gigantic haystack. A grand total of 624 grants and 902 contracts are valued between $400,000 and $600,000 – paid for by your lifetime of hard work and publicly named and shamed thanks to Elon Musk and DOGE.
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Ultimately, that’s the question in front of us as the debate turns to extending the Trump tax cuts.
Do you really believe that the federal government is spending your lifetime of taxes better than you can?
And do you still believe that, knowing that your lifetime of taxes only pays for one year of one grant for a program halfway around the world?
The media and the Democrats are spinning a lie that the government knows better than you do and that you shouldn’t want your own money back to pay for your housing costs, your kids, your investments, or your retirement.
For a lifetime of work, you deserve more.
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