Section one
Line by line
| On your W-2 | Line item | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Box 2 | Federal income taxOn $68,900 of taxable income, after the $16,100 standard deduction. | $9,870 |
| Box 4 | Social Security6.2% on the first $184,500 you earn. | $5,270 |
| Box 6 | Medicare1.45%, with no cap. | $1,233 |
| Box 17 | State income tax4.40% of gross, approximated. | $3,740 |
| Not on it | Sales tax, estimatedCollected a few dollars at a time, never totalled anywhere. | $1,710 |
| Not on it | Property tax, estimatedA year of tax on the median home in the state you picked. Owed on a home already paid off, every year, for as long as you hold it. Stop paying and the county sells the house. | $3,230 |
| Total for the year | $25,052 |
Box numbers refer to the real form. Anything marked otherwise never appears on a W-2 at all, which is part of why it goes unnoticed. IRS, About Form W-2
Section two
What one year of it buys
Used car, average price
$26,500 each
Down payment on a median US home
10% of $408,800, the same US median used in section five
Zillow Home Value Index, US median, the value in states.json
Years of student loan payments
$503 a month
Years of a household's share of health premiums
$6,850 a year
Section three
What your money was actually spent on
Your life's work, in their hands
5 years and 11 months
You work 20 years. That much of it is for the government, not for you.
In a 40-hour week, 11.8 hours of your work are theirs before an hour of it is yours.
Every dollar the federal government spent in 2025, from Treasury’s closed accounts. "Yours" is your $327,450 of federal tax, split the same way. The last column is that slice, priced in your own working life. Each slice also says what that money buys now against what it bought before. Final Monthly Treasury Statement, FY2025, total outlays
Over 20 years you hand over $501,043 in tax. $327,450 of it reaches Washington, and that is the sum every figure below divides. Each one is your share of a national total, not a purchase in your name.
The scale of it
Your whole working life, laid against one year of federal spending. The unit is the second.
$7.01tn a year
of all federal spending
Outlays were $7.01 trillion in the 2025 fiscal year, from Treasury's own closed accounts. That is what your life's work bought at the till.
$970bn a year
of interest on the national debt
Three numbers describe this and they are not the same. Treasury as a department spent $1,458.9 billion, which is the slice you see in the donut above. Gross interest on the debt alone was $1,215.6 billion. Net of what the government pays its own trust funds, CBO puts the cost near $970 billion. This card uses the smallest of the three. Even at the smallest, it buys nothing. It is rent on money already spent.
$1.8tn a year
of the deficit on its own
The 2025 shortfall was $1.8 trillion. That part was borrowed, not taxed, so no tax receipt covers it. It is deferred tax. The bill goes to whoever is working when it comes due, with interest on top, and many of them cannot vote yet. Read every share on this page as a share of what was spent, not of what was collected.
Pissed away
This is money that bought nothing at all.
$186bn a year, over your 20 years
your share of the payments the government admits were wrong
Fifteen agencies reported $186 billion of improper payments in 2025, across 64 programs. The running total since 2003 is about $3 trillion. That is 2.7% of all federal spending. The same 2.7% of your own federal tax, over 20 years, is the figure above.
federal agencies used a quarter or less of their headquarters
GAO measured real attendance against building capacity over three weeks in 2023. You pay the lease, the heat and the light on the empty desks.
the spending rate in the last week of the year, before the budget expires
An agency loses whatever it has not spent by 30 September, so it spends it. Two economists tracked the quality of $130 billion of federal IT projects. The ones bought in that last week were 2.2 to 5.6 times more likely to score below the middle of the pack.
still on the table from duplicate and overlapping programs
GAO has published a list of them every year since 2011. Acting on the earlier lists has already saved $725 billion. This much is left, named and costed, waiting for a Congress that wants it.
Stolen outright
Not wasted. Taken. Every figure here comes from the government's own investigators.
$233bn a year, over your 20 years
your share of the money stolen from the government every year
GAO made the first government-wide estimate of fraud in 2024, on 2018 to 2022 data. The answer was $233 billion to $521 billion a year: three to seven cents of every federal dollar. This card uses the low end. That is 3.3% of all federal spending. The same 3.3% of your own federal tax, over 20 years, is the figure above.
$200bn once, at your rate
your share of the pandemic business loans that went to fraudsters
The Small Business Administration's own inspector general puts more than $200 billion of COVID business loans in the hands of potentially fraudulent actors. That is at least 17 cents of every dollar those programs paid out. About $30 billion has been seized or returned. This bill is 10 days of all federal spending, so it costs you 10 days of your own federal tax.
SBA OIG 23-09, COVID-19 Pandemic EIDL and PPP Loan Fraud Landscape
$100bn once, at your rate
your share of the unemployment money that was simply stolen
GAO puts pandemic unemployment fraud between $100 billion and $135 billion. This card uses the low end. States have clawed back about $1.2 billion of it. This bill is 5.2 days of all federal spending, so it costs you 5.2 days of your own federal tax.
Nobody can say where it went
The money left. The receipts cannot be produced, and in most cases nobody was held to account.
audits the Pentagon has failed, out of every one it has ever taken
Congress ordered an annual audit from 2018. The Department of Defense has never passed one, and it is the only one of the 24 major agencies that never has. The 2025 audit covered $4.65 trillion of assets and found 26 material weaknesses. The department now says it will pass by 2028.
CRS IF12627, Defense Primer: FY2025 Department of Defense Audit Results
$26bn once, at your rate
your share of what was wasted rebuilding Afghanistan
The Afghanistan watchdog shut for good on 31 January 2026. Its final report counted 1,327 instances of waste, fraud and abuse, and at least $26 billion lost, out of $148.21 billion appropriated. This bill is 1.4 days of all federal spending, so it costs you 1.4 days of your own federal tax.
$7.1bn once, at your rate
your share of the equipment handed to the Taliban
About $7.1 billion of equipment bought for the Afghan forces was left behind in August 2021: rifles, night vision, armored vehicles, aircraft. The same watchdog says it now forms the core of the Taliban's security apparatus. This bill is 8.9 hours of all federal spending, so it costs you 8.9 hours of your own federal tax.
Prices only a government pays
One thing, bought once, at a price no buyer spending their own money would agree to.
the markup Boeing charged the Air Force on one soap dispenser
The Pentagon's inspector general checked the price of 46 spare parts for the C-17 transport aircraft. Twelve were overpriced. The lavatory soap dispenser alone cost the Air Force $149,072 more than a fair price.
for one filling station in Afghanistan that should have cost $500,000
A Pentagon task force built a compressed natural gas station at Sheberghan between 2011 and 2014. The same station in Pakistan costs no more than $500,000. Overheads alone came to $30 million. The Department of Defense told the auditor it could not explain the cost.
SIGAR-16-2-SP, DoD's Compressed Natural Gas Filling Station in Afghanistan (archived)
what 16 cargo planes that cost $549 million sold for as scrap
The Air Force bought 20 Italian G222 transports for the Afghan Air Force in 2008. They were unreliable, and Afghan pilots called them unsafe. Sixteen were sold for scrap in 2014, at about six cents a pound. Nobody was held to account.
for one launch of the Space Launch System rocket, a price NASA's own auditor calls unsustainable
NASA's inspector general priced each of the first four Artemis launches at $4.1 billion: the rocket, the capsule and the ground operations together. He used the word unsustainable to Congress. Nothing is recovered. Every launch destroys the rocket.
NASA OIG, testimony to the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics
Bought in your name
Not frivolous. Deliberate. Your share of what the money was used to do.
JDAM kits, turning dumb bombs into guided ones
About $25,000 a kit at the Air Force's largest buys, rising above $80,000 when they order fewer. Reported against the 2024 Boeing contract. Each one is used once.
155mm artillery shells
About $3,000 for a basic high-explosive round, the figure US officials give. A gun crew can fire this many in an afternoon.
hours of an F-35 in the air
$41,986 an hour, everything counted: fuel, parts, contractors, overhead. One hour.
years of holding one person in federal prison
$47,162 a year. The Bureau of Prisons publishes this figure itself, in the Federal Register.
Annual Determination of Average Cost of Incarceration Fee, FY2024
$2tn once, at your rate
your share of the F-35 program, from drawing board to scrapyard
GAO now puts the lifetime cost above $2 trillion, up from $1.7 trillion, while the plan is to fly the fleet less than before. About $442 billion buys the aircraft. The other $1.6 trillion keeps them flying to 2088. This bill is 104 days of all federal spending, so it costs you 104 days of your own federal tax.
civilians killed by US airstrikes every day, on average, for twenty years
Airwars counted the strikes and the local casualty reports in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Libya, from 2001 to 2021. It puts civilian deaths from US actions between 22,679 and 48,308. Spread over the 7,305 days of those twenty years, that is three to seven people a day, every day. The US military flew at least 91,340 airstrikes in that time.
$8tn once, at your rate
your share of the wars fought since 2001
At least 940,000 people died in the direct violence: civilians, soldiers on every side, contractors, journalists and aid workers. This bill is 1.1 years of all federal spending, so it costs you 1.1 years of your own federal tax.
The defense they always make
The pension, the health care, the schools. The programs people name first when they defend the tax, priced by the people who run them.
if your Social Security tax had stayed yours
$10,540 a year goes in, counting the half your employer pays. Held for 20 years at 7.0%, it would be this, and drawing 4% of it would pay you $18,494 a year without touching the pot. The average retired worker collects $25,013 a year, and half collect less. Your own benefit depends on an earnings history this page never asks for. A benefit stops when you die. A balance passes to your children.
the year the trust fund empties and benefits are cut by law
The 2025 Trustees Report projects the combined funds depleted in 2034. Income then covers 81% of scheduled benefits. The remaining 19% is cut automatically, with no vote and no appeal.
the legal right you hold over the money you have paid in
In Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603 (1960), the Supreme Court held that paying in creates no contractual right to receive. Congress kept the power to change the schedule whenever it likes.
the rise in individual health premiums in the four years after the Affordable Care Act took effect
HHS's own accounting, not a critic's. Across the 39 states on healthcare.gov the average premium went from $2,784 a year in 2013 to $5,712 in 2017. In 62% of them it at least doubled. The law was sold as a way to bring the price down.
the yearly premium on family health cover through an employer
Up 6% in 2025 alone and 24% over five years, ahead of both wages and inflation. Your employer pays most of it out of money that would otherwise be your wage, so it never reaches your payslip. It is the largest bill you never see.
of the entire US economy now goes on health care
CMS's own actuaries put the bill at $5.3 trillion in 2024, $15,474 for every person in the country. It grew 7.2% that year against 5.3% for the economy. Medicare and Medicaid together pay for more of it than private insurance does. This is the market the tax built.
of Medicare and Medicaid payments the government itself calls improper, in one year
CMS published the 2025 rates itself: $28.8bn in Medicare fee-for-service, $23.7bn in Medicare Advantage, $4.2bn in Part D, $37.4bn in Medicaid. Half of the government-wide $186 billion above, out of two programs. This is that card's largest part, not a second charge.
the year Medicare's hospital fund runs dry and payments are cut by law
The 2025 trustees moved the date three years closer in a single report. From 2033 income covers 89% of the care already promised. The other 11% is cut automatically, and the gap widens after. This is the second fund on this page with an expiry date.
the decade whose test scores today's 17-year-olds still have not beaten
NAEP has run the same test since 1971. In 2012, the last year 17-year-olds sat it, their reading and mathematics scores were no better than in the early 1970s. Real spending per pupil more than doubled over the same years. Twice the money, the same result.
NCES Fast Facts, long-term trends in reading and mathematics achievement · NCES Fast Facts, expenditures per pupil
of every extra dollar of subsidized student loan went straight onto the tuition bill
Three Federal Reserve Bank of New York economists measured what colleges did when Congress raised the loan caps. Sixty cents in the dollar came back as higher tuition, strongest at the dearest programs. Help with the price raised the price.
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Staff Report 733, Credit Supply and the Rise in College Tuition
Section four
If you had invested it instead
Balance after 20 years
$1,098,916
Assumes you set aside $25,052 at the start of every year for 20 years and earned 7.0% a year on it. That is the yellow below.
Of which is growth
$597,874
You would have contributed $501,043. The rest is compounding, which by now is doing more work than you are.
Held in a taxable account and sold in one go, that $597,874 of growth would owe about $113,482 in federal capital gains tax, plus any state tax. Held in a Roth it would owe none. In a 401(k) it would be taxed as income on the way out. This page deducts none of it: which account the money sits in is your choice, not a tax rate. IRS, topic 409, capital gains and losses
After 20 years at this income
What you actually took home
$1,198,957
What you could have had
$2,297,874
Tax you paid $501,043Growth you never earned $597,874What the tax cost you $1,098,916
You take home $1,198,957 over those 20 years. Had the $501,043 in tax stayed with you and been invested, you would be sitting on $2,297,874 instead. Your spending never changes; only the tax money is invested.
Section five
What it buys back
Invested instead of paid, $1,098,916 buys back 17 of the 18 rungs below. The federal government spends that much in 4.9 seconds.
For someone else
None of this is a thing you own. Every price here is worked out by an outside evaluator.
These are modeled averages from GiveWell, not price tags. A cost per life saved carries a wide band, and GiveWell expects every one of these figures to rise over time. GiveDirectly, which simply hands cash to people in extreme poverty, reports that about 89 cents of each dollar reaches the recipient. GiveDirectly, financials
For your family
The bills that decide what your children get to do, and who looks after your parents.
For you
Your own time and your own property, bought outright, with no lender left to pay. Only the tax on it never ends.
A rung about your own time is priced at what you keep after every tax on this page, held flat. That is a smaller number than your paycheck, because sales tax and property tax come out of the paycheck later. Other prices were sampled on 26 August 2026. The home is the median value in the state you picked above. Gold moves daily; this uses spot on 26 August 2026. Zillow Home Value Index, all homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted Spot gold, US dollars per troy ounce
Section six
But what about the roads?
You asked about the roads. Start with the size of the bill: roads, rail and air together were 1.82% of federal spending last year. Then ask who else has ever done these jobs. In every case below, somebody already has.
The roads are not the bill
Before asking who would build them, look at what share of your money goes anywhere near them.
of all federal spending went to roads, rail and air
The Department of Transportation spent $127.6 billion of the $7.01 trillion that went out in the 2025 fiscal year. Everything people picture when they say roads and bridges is under two cents of the dollar.
of everything you hand over, at the transportation share
Over 20 years you hand over $327,450 in federal tax. At the transportation share, $5,960 of it is the roads answer. The other $321,490 is everything else. This is the transportation slice of the donut above, pulled out and set on its own. It is what the roads answer is actually worth as a defense of the rest of the bill.
Who builds the roads
The question in its original form. It was answered once in America and is being answered now in Sweden. The state's own flagship road answered it a third way.
private companies built America's first road network
Between the 1790s and the 1840s more than two thousand private turnpike companies laid over 10,000 miles of road across the eastern states. They were financed by subscription, not by tax. This is how America got its roads before anyone thought to ask who else would.
Klein and Majewski, Turnpikes and Toll Roads in Nineteenth-Century America, EH.net
of Sweden's roads are private, against 98,000 km run by the state
Around 60,000 private road associations own and maintain roughly two thirds of the Swedish road network. Neighbors organize, levy their own dues and hire the work. Some take a state subsidy in return for public access; most do not. This is not history. It is how Sweden runs today.
late, on the road network people name first when they defend the tax
In 1955 the Bureau of Public Roads told Congress the Interstate system would cost $27 billion and open by 1975. The last stretch opened in 1991. This is not a market comparison and is not filed as one. It is the government's own promise against its own outcome. The card quotes the schedule, not a cost ratio, and the reason matters: the $27 billion was quoted in 1955 dollars and the $114 billion finally spent was counted as it was spent, through 1991. Those are not the same dollars, so dividing one by the other would overstate the overrun. The dates need no such adjustment. Both figures come from the FHWA's own history of the program.
FHWA highway history, Target: $27 Billion, and the system as built
Who keeps the commons
Roads, parks, lighting, drainage and trash. The shared things nobody owns alone, which is meant to be the hardest case of all.
Americans already chose who maintains their commons
You read the dues before you buy, and you can sell and leave. Tax offers neither choice. 373,000 community associations raise $112 billion a year from their own members and spend it on roads, drainage, lighting, parks, water and security. Say the weakness plainly: once you own, the dues are compulsory, the association can place a lien on your home, and it exists under a state enabling statute. The claim here is narrow. It is about consent at the door, not about a gentler collector.
Foundation for Community Association Research, 2025 Statistical Review
Who stands guard
Protection is the one job almost everybody grants the state. Americans already buy most of theirs on the open market.
private security officers outnumber sworn police
The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 1,272,400 security guards against 674,910 police officers. Most of the protection Americans actually receive, at the shop, the office, the hospital and the gated street, is already bought rather than taxed for.
as much, per hour of contracted neighborhood patrol
One buyer, one beat, one job: the Sharpstown Civic Association in Houston pays for patrol of the same 7,000 homes, and in 2012 it changed supplier on price. Harris County constables charged the association about $40 an hour. SEAL Security charged about $24 an hour, and the association got more officers on the street for less money. PolitiFact checked this and threw out the viral version: Sharpstown never fired a police force, and Houston police still answer its 911 calls. This is the fact-checked remainder, which is the only part worth quoting.
PolitiFact, Not so fast: cops fired, private security hired, March 2015 · Texas Monthly, on the Sharpstown security contract
as much, per year to screen one large airport
Congress wrote one screening standard and the TSA certifies every screener against it. Los Angeles uses federal staff, San Francisco uses a contractor under the TSA's own Screening Partnership Program, and the committee found screening quality about the same at both. LAX cost $90,600,000 a year. San Francisco's contractor screened 65 percent more passengers per screener, and at that productivity LAX would cost $52,000,000. Two warnings. The second figure is the committee's extrapolation from San Francisco's measured throughput, not a bill anyone paid. And the TSA's own accounting reaches the opposite answer, putting contract screening about 3 percent dearer, because it loads federal overheads onto the private airports and not onto its own. Figures are 2011.
GAO-16-19, Screening Partnership Program, TSA cost estimates · House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee staff, LAX and SFO screening, 2011
of weapons the government's own testers walked past its screeners
This card is about price against result, not about who fails less. In 2015 the Homeland Security inspector general sent auditors through TSA checkpoints with weapons and mock explosives. They got through 67 times out of 70. A 2017 re-test put the failure rate near 80 percent; the exact number is classified. Of nine vulnerabilities that covert testing found from 2015 onward, the GAO reported that none had been formally resolved by September 2018. This is what the premium on the card beside this one buys. Say the weakness plainly: screening before 2001 was contracted to private firms, and it failed too. The narrow claim stands. You are charged more and the result did not improve.
Running the sky
Air traffic control and access to orbit. Two jobs written off as too big, too dangerous and too unprofitable for anyone but a state.
as much, per hour of instrument-rules air traffic control
The identical job on the identical unit: keeping aircraft apart under instrument rules, costed per flight hour, in two neighboring countries whose controllers hand traffic to each other every day. Canada took air traffic control out of government hands in 1996. In 2022 NAV CANADA ran it at $369 a flight hour against the FAA's $586, and it did so with a lower loss-of-separation rate: cheaper and safer on the measure that matters most. NAV CANADA is a non-profit owned by the people who use it rather than a company seeking a return, so this is the mildest version of the argument. It is also the largest test of it, being a whole country thirty years in.
Federal Aviation Administration, Air Traffic Organization · Reason Foundation, Canada offers important lessons for US air traffic control
as much, per astronaut carried to orbit and home again
One customer buying one thing: NASA putting a NASA astronaut into low Earth orbit and returning them alive. Same agency, same crew, same destination, same human rating, bought first from itself and now from a contractor. A seat on the Space Shuttle cost about $170,000,000 in today's money. NASA pays SpaceX about $55,000,000 a seat on Crew Dragon, the figure its own inspector general uses. For the years between the two it paid Russia about $86 million a seat, more than either. The Shuttle also carried cargo on the same flight, which no per-seat figure can separate cleanly.
Estimated cost per seat on selected spacecraft · NASA Office of Inspector General, IG-20-005, NASA's Management of Crew Transportation
These are not laboratory comparisons, and this page will not pretend otherwise. Two projects are never built to one specification, on one terrain, under one set of rules. A public price usually carries costs a private one does not: land taken by force of law, wages set by statute, and the review process that permits the work. A private price sometimes rests on public money, public research, or a public launch pad. Private roads and private guards mostly serve the people who pay for them, which is the whole objection to them. Every note above names the specific weakness in its own comparison. The claim here is narrow and it is the only one worth making: none of these jobs needs a state to get done, and the state does not do them cheaply.
Read this before you quote the number
- These are estimates. A real return depends on retirement contributions, itemized deductions, and dozens of other things this page does not ask about. It is not tax advice.
- One credit is modelled, and no refund is. The child tax credit comes off the federal line, up to $2,200 a child, falling away above $200,000 of income, or $400,000 on a joint return. It stops at zero: this page never shows a refund, and the refundable part of that credit is not counted. Nor is the earned income tax credit. So a head of household earning $50,000 with two children correctly owes no federal income tax here — but the real return also pays them about $1,650 back, and this page cannot show that. IRS, Child Tax Credit
- State tax is approximated as a flat rate on gross income. Most states use brackets and their own deductions, so treat this figure as a ballpark. Until you pick a state, the page charges the median state rate, not zero. Pick your own state to replace it. Tax Foundation, state individual income tax rates
- This measures only what left your pocket, not what came back. These taxes also pay for roads, courts, schools, defense and the like. Section three prices each of them against what it used to cost. Section six asks how much of the bill they actually are, and who else has ever done them.
- Every comparison in section six opens by saying what makes the two sides the same job. Same statute, same unit, same buyer, same beat. A card that cannot make that claim is not on the page; the ones thrown out for failing it are listed in
DATA.md. What remains is still not a laboratory. A public price often carries land taken by force of law, wages set by statute, and the review that permits the work. A private road or a private guard mostly serves whoever pays, which is the standing objection to both. Each card names its own remaining weakness after the figures. Read those before you quote a multiple. - Your dollars are not traceable. Money is fungible. You did not personally buy a missile, a prison cell or an empty desk. Every figure in section three is your share of a national total, worked out from published accounts. Nothing on this page claims a specific dollar of yours went to a specific thing.
- A cumulative bill is priced against a single year of spending. Every figure in section three divides by the same thing: the part of every federal dollar you pay this year. The two Afghanistan cards and the war card read low because of it. Those bills were run up over two decades, when the government spent far less each year than it does now, so measuring them against today's larger outlays shrinks your share. Your real share of those three is larger than the card says, not smaller. The other lump cards are not affected the same way: the equipment left behind was a single month in 2021, the two pandemic frauds fell in years whose outlays were close to today's, and the F-35 total runs to 2088, so most of it has not been spent yet.
- Charity figures are estimates, not price tags. A cost per life saved is a model with a wide band around it, and GiveWell expects every one of these figures to rise over time. Read the linked analysis before you quote a number. GiveWell cost-effectiveness estimates, dollars per unit of good
- The employer's share is counted as your money only if you accept the incidence argument — that absent the tax, the same amount would have reached your wage. Most economists do; note that had it been paid to you as salary, income tax would have applied to it too, which this page does not model. CBO Working Paper 2021-06, payroll tax pass-through
- Sections three and six divide your federal tax only. The bill at the top of this page counts federal, state and local tax together. These two sections divide federal spending, because Treasury publishes those accounts and no single ledger adds up all fifty states. So they use the federal part of your bill: income tax, both payroll taxes, and the employer's half when you count it. Your state, sales and property tax is real money and it is in the total above, but it funded no federal outlay and does not enlarge your share of one. Section six still understates the road bill: most roads are built and maintained by states and counties, not by Washington, and that spending is outside these accounts entirely.
- Property tax depends on whether you own or rent. An owner is charged the state's effective rate on the state's median home, not on a home you told us about, so a cheaper or dearer house changes your own bill. A renter is charged the property tax inside a year of average US rent — 11 cents of every rent dollar, from the landlords' own trade association. That rent is a national average, so the renter figure does not move when you change the state, although the real thing does: the same research puts New Jersey at 16 cents and Arizona at 4. Economists also disagree about how much of a landlord's property tax a tenant really bears rather than the owner. Carroll and Yinger found the tax on rental housing is, on average, not a benefit tax, and any part of it that falls on the owner instead would make the renter figure smaller. Either way this is the one tax on the page you keep paying after the thing is bought and paid for, and an owner who stops paying loses the house to the county. Tax Foundation, property taxes paid as a share of home value National Apartment Association, Breaking down one dollar of rent Carroll and Yinger, National Tax Journal 1994, on rental housing
- Investment returns are not guaranteed. This page assumes a steady annual return, which no real market delivers. Actual sequences of good and bad years produce very different results.
- Everything is in today's dollars and holds your income flat, which keeps the comparison readable but is not how a career usually goes.
- Figures used: 2026 IRS brackets and standard deductions, a $184,500 Social Security wage base, and US average prices sampled on 26 August 2026. IRS annual inflation adjustments, tax year 2026 (Rev. Proc. 2025-32) SSA, contribution and benefit base Typical 2026 US retail and average prices
- Data last refreshed 27 August 2026. Every rate and price on this page comes from a JSON file in the repository. Each file records its own source and refresh date.