Where Did My Tax Dollars Go is Google’s Data Viz Challenger Winner

Where Did My Tax Dollars Go is a web application that shows a graphic representation of how your income was taxed (at the federal level) and spent (mostly in Social Security, Income Security and Medicare). The application shows you a high-level view of the spending with items that you are probably familiar with. However, you can click on each slice of the chart to dig one layer deeper into each budget. For example, did you know that almost 1% of your taxes goes to the Foreign Military Sales Trust Fund?

This application won’t do your taxes for you, but I think that it does a great job of raising awareness about how our tax dollars are spent, especially when the economic environment is challenging. But what I really like about Where Did My Tax Dollars Go is that it does it in a clear and visually appealing way. It’s something that Google rewards only too rarely, so this is refreshing.

Anil Kandangath, the creator of this application will receive $5000 (and 15-minutes of fame). “Anil’s entry is a great example of how data visualization can take boring, complicated, but critically important information and make it accessible to everyone. Congratulations, Anil.” says Google. You might also want to check on the runner-ups Every Day is Tax Day, and Budget Climb. Both can be found on datavizchallenge.org

Hubert Nguyen
Categories: General, Web
Tags: Google