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Happy Tax Day! Now, where did your tax dollars go?
April 18, 2011
Like it or not, Americans have a date with the IRS today. In a few hours, our tax forms will have been sent in... yet most of us will still be left wondering, “How will the government spend our money?”
In February, we
launched
the
Data Viz Challenge
to answer that very question. The challenge was a five-week competition that asked developers to visualize how our federal income tax dollars are spent. We received more than 40 thought-provoking entries that each take a unique approach to making this data more accessible to taxpayers.
Take a look at the variety of visualizations in this short video:
The entries ranged from quirky and fun to serious and academic. Some were as simple as a
receipt
, others showed us how many
minutes
or
days
we work to cover public spending.
One
even rendered the data as a cityscape and invited people to climb the towers virtually.
In the end, our
jury
selected Anil Kandangath’s “
Where Did My Tax Dollars Go?
” as our Grand Prize winner. As the jury noted, his entry is information-rich but elegantly designed, and at no point while interacting with the visualization do you lose the “big picture.” 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.
Thank you to all of the entrants and our partners
Eyebeam
and
Whatwepayfor.com
for making this possible. We hope these submissions help you better understand where your tax dollars are spent—and even inject a little bit of fun into your tax day this year. Happy filing!
Posted by Jenny Ramaswamy, Google Creative Lab
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