What happens to all the money collected by the IRS?

According to the Office of Management and Budget, in fiscal year 2008 total government receipts were about 2.5 trillion dollars. That includes taxes and other kinds of federal receipts, e.g., everything from interest on loans from the federal government to the money you pay at national parks. But most of it is taxes.

Of that 2.5 trillion, the single largest expense--479 billion dollars--was on defense. For 2009, the President has requested an increase from 479 billion to 515 billion.

Other expenditures by department include:

Agriculture 21.8 billion

Commerce 6.9 billion

Education 57.2 billion

Energy 23.9 billion

Health and Human Services 71.9 billion

Homeland Security 34.9 billion

Housing and Urban Development 37.4 billion

Interior 10.6 billion

Justice 22.7 billion

Labor 11.4 billion

State and Other International Programs 32.9 billion

Transportation 15.5 billion

Treasury 12.0 billion

Veterans Affairs 39.4 billion

Other expenses not listed above include the Army Corps of Engineers, EPA, Executive Office of the President, NASA, National Science Foundation, etc.

You won't find the CIA anywhere on the list of expenditures. That amount is a secret.

And of course, a lot of that 2.5 trillion went to pay off debt incurred in previous years.

So that's where it goes.

Good thing? Doubtful. But it seems like everyone hates government spending except when the government spends the money on their own pet projects or their personal benefits.

It is the primary funding for the federal government. Almost every federal government program, every agency, every employee, etc. is paid for by the treasury and the IRS is part of the Treasury Department.

There are other funding sources by none as large as the federal income tax.

Schools, federal aid programs(welfare,food stamps), pockets of our politicians, abortion mills like planned parenthood which gets 1 billion a year, global programs like paying for forced abortions in third world countries,we give billions a year to the U.N. Our taxes would be so much lower if our government would just get off our backs and stop giving our money away to useless programs here in the U.S. and around the world.

basically it all goes to "general fund" for the government and is then filtered by the GAO. A large portion goes to pay for some legitimate services the government provides. An even bigger portion is "siphoned" off and goes to graft, corruption and payola for politician. And, the rest ... they squander worse than a drunken sailor. (please excuse the mtetaphor. The drunken sailors don't derserve that kind of insult.)

Well, that nasty little dust-up in Iraq is getting the lion's share. Then there's the general lack of efficiency of large organizations, i.e. civil service.

It goes to the owners of the Federal Reserve Bank.

Hard telling,they probably have a huge party

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/