Prismet
Uncle Scam
Where is my money going?
Type a salary and a ZIP code. Get the receipt nobody hands you: what you paid, what it bought, and what got put on the card.
Loading the tax tables…
Your receipt
The image includes only the first receipt until the local receipt is ready.
The rest of the bill
Your choice stays on this device and resets when the ZIP changes.
Who signs off on it
Congress writes the budget and the tax code; these are the members who vote for your address. The debt figures are the Treasury's, for the day each member first took office and for today. They show what happened on each watch, not who voted for what.
What landed near you
Federal contracts, grants, loans and direct payments recorded with work in your ZIP code and county.
This sends your ZIP code, not your salary, to USAspending.gov, the Treasury's public spending site.
How this is worked out
- An estimate for tax year 2026, not tax advice. It assumes wages from one job are your only income, the standard deduction, no dependents and no credits. Married, joint treats the salary as the household's wages.
- State tax uses each state's published brackets, standard deduction and personal exemption. Head of household uses the single schedule. The first receipt excludes local income, sales and property tax. The second receipt adds the available local income taxes and typical sales/property amounts. School district income tax and gas taxes are not included.
- The rest of the bill: city income tax covers Ohio; county income tax covers Maryland and Indiana. A ZIP-level city assignment is not an address-level determination and Ohio assumes you live and work in the same city. Other local income taxes may apply and are not counted.
- Sales tax is a typical estimate from the IRS 2025 tables, using wages as household income and a household size of one for single, two for joint or head of household. Ohio has ZIP-level local sales rates; other local rates have incomplete coverage. Alaska local sales taxes are not included even though Alaska has no state sales tax.
- Property tax uses the Census 2020–2024 median for homeowners in the ZIP area, not the tax on your home. Owner totals count that median; renter totals count no direct property payment. The amount a landlord passes through in rent is not measured.
- Government levels are an illustrative grouping: California and Nevada state sales-table amounts include a uniform local portion, and Census property tax can cover several taxing jurisdictions.
- Where it went: your federal income tax is spread across the budget in proportion to what Washington has spent this fiscal year. Social Security and Medicare are left out of that split because your payroll taxes are listed for them on their own lines; in truth Medicare also draws on income taxes.
- Put on the card: what Washington spent beyond what it collected, scaled to your federal bill.
- Who signs off: your House district comes from the Census Bureau's ZIP to district file for the 119th Congress. A ZIP code that crosses a district line lists every district it touches.
- What landed near you: USAspending.gov's award records for the last full fiscal year, by where the work is done. It is not every federal dollar spent in a place.
- Time served counts every day of the year and an eight-hour workday; a paycheck is one of 26.
A parody. Not affiliated with the IRS, the Treasury or any government.