CED Paystub Education Project
An initiative to better inform and engage people about the federal budget and fiscal
sustainability by reaching them at a more personal level through their experiences as
employees
Overview Through a series of engaging and interactive, web-based infographics, individuals will be able to see how line
items on their paystubs/statements directly correspond to specific government spending and tax programs, thus making
them “stakeholders” and even “shareholders” in the government’s activities.
Status of Project As part of the planning phase of this project, CED will be surveying members on the various ways they
currently share information with their employees, the types of information they provide at a more personal level, and
their level of interest in having their companies participate in this initiative. We will also be developing content that will
eventually be built into a web interface once the project is fully underway in 2016.
Users will learn about:
The major government spending programs and
how they are financed by the various taxes withheld
What does your paystub
have to do with the federal budget?
The benefits workers are entitled to receive from
the programs their taxes pay for
What the federal budget deficit is and what it has
to do with current and future taxes and spending
What kind of tradeoffs they are willing to
personally make among higher deficits, higher
taxes, and lower spending
EARNINGS STATEMENT
COMPANY NAME
Company Address
EMPLOYEE NAME / ADDRESS
SSN
John Doe, 123 Abc Street, Jax FL
INCOME
RATE
GROSS EARNINGS 11.47
xxx-xx-1234
YTD DEDUCTIONS
3560.80
PAY DATE
# 10015
09/27/2015-10/03/2015
10/15/2015
Employee # 123
HOURS
CURRENT PAY
DEDUCTIONS
40
458.80
STATUTORY DEDUCTIONS
...and more
YTD GROSS
18352.00
REPORTING PERIOD
YTD NET PAY
14792.20
TOTAL
YTD TOTAL
FICA - MEDICARE
6.65
266.00
FICA - SOCIAL SECURITY
28.45
1138.00
FEDERAL INCOME TAX
53.92
2156.80
STATE INCOME TAX
0.00
0.00
TOTAL
458.80
DEDUCTIONS
89.02
NET PAY
359.70
Click on any highlighted line
item to learn more
www.ced.org | www.conferenceboard.org
An example: What my tax dollars pay for--and what they don’t
• See different categories of federal government
spending as share of total federal government spending
• Click on any segment to explore more details about
each type of spending
• Fill in actual dollar amounts of taxes to translate into
dollar amounts spent on each spending category
• See that federal tax dollars don’t pay for all of the
costs of total federal spending
• Learn that the “budget deficit” is the amount the
government needs to borrow each year as a result of
the gap between spending and revenues
What my federal income tax
contribution buys…
Here are the major categories of federal spending that federal tax revenues
pay for. Click on any segment to see more details about each category.
Fill in your dollar amount of taxes to see how much of the
different types of government spending your tax dollars buy.
100
60
• Click through to learn where deficits and accumulated
debt are headed if adjustments aren’t made to revenues
or spending
• Further interactive features (multiple-choice quizzes,
rankings, fill-in-the-blanks) will allow users to adjust
how they would choose to allocate their contributions
or otherwise prioritize spending and revenue programs
and to see how those changes would affect budgetary
outcomes
.
25.5%
HEALTH CARE
24
SOCIAL SECURITY
13
OTHER “MANDATORY”
31.6
“DISCRETIONARY”
5.9
NET INTEREST
80
40
20
0
Yet, those tax dollars fall short
of paying for it all…
Total federal spending actually exceeds tax revenues collected. The annual difference is called
the “budget deficit.” Deficits accumulate over time to make up the total stock of “federal debt”—
what the government has borrowed from the rest of the U.S. economy and rest of the world.
Total Annual Spending
Annual Deficit
11.6%
100
80
Amount of annual
60
spending that
taxes pay for
(Annual Revenue)
40
20
0
For more information, please contact:
Diane Lim Vice President, Economic Research, [email protected]; 202 469 1357
www.ced.org | www.conferenceboard.org
88.4%
See where federal
budget deficits and
debt are headed.