FraudBadNo taxation without receipts

Federal · State · Local

You can see the total.
You can't see the receipt.

Every level of government publishes how much it spends. Follow a single dollar down — to who got it, who they paid next, what was bought and whether it showed up — and the records run out. Here's exactly where.

Follow one dollar down

The trail, level by level

VisiblePublic and usablePartlyGaps or delaysDarkNo public record
Federal$7.4 trillion spent in FY2026
StateRun the biggest federal programs
Local91,729 counties, cities, towns and districts
01The totalHow much was spent
The totalVisible
Treasury posts the total every month: $7,395,799,983,313 spent in fiscal 2026.
U.S. Department of the Treasury, Sep 30, 2026
The totalPartly
Audited totals can arrive years late: Illinois released its fiscal 2023 report 774 days after the year ended. The standard is 180.
Truth in Accounting, Aug 21, 2025
The totalPartly
56% of America's 91,729 local governments list no website with the Census Bureau.
U.S. Census Bureau, Sep 2026
02Who got itA named recipient
Who got itPartly
USAspending.gov names prime award recipients, but other transaction agreements aren't consistently reported.
U.S. Government Accountability Office, Mar 18, 2026
Who got itPartly
No national standard for state checkbooks. The last 50-state report card on spending transparency we found is from 2018.
U.S. PIRG Education Fund, 2018
Who got itPartly
In U.S. PIRG's 2013 report card on the 30 largest cities, 13 had no online checkbook.
Governing, Jan 24, 2013
03Where it landedA city, county or ZIP
Where it landedPartly
74% of FY2024 federal grant dollars ($712.6B of $958.6B) had no county, city or ZIP attached.
Project On Government Oversight, Jul 21, 2026
Where it landedDark
Medicaid, run by states, is 0.2% traceable to a local place in federal data. SNAP: $84.8B with no local tracking.
Project On Government Oversight, Jul 21, 2026
Where it landedVisible
Local by definition: the money lands in your town.
04Who they paid nextSubcontracts and subawards
Who they paid nextDark
About 70% of prime recipients pass money on to others. Only about 10% report it.
Project On Government Oversight, Jul 21, 2026
Who they paid nextDark
State agencies running SNAP report no subawards to the federal database.
Project On Government Oversight, Jul 21, 2026
Who they paid nextDark
Los Angeles: auditors couldn't fully quantify spending by program across $2.3B in homelessness funding.
Spectrum News, Mar 6, 2025
05What it boughtItem, quantity and price
What it boughtDark
97% of 2.4 million prime transactions used duplicate descriptions that say nothing about what was bought.
Project On Government Oversight, Jul 21, 2026
What it boughtDark
77% of Medicaid's improper payments in FY2025 came from missing documentation.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Jan 15, 2026
What it boughtDark
LA provider invoices lacked dates and support. One site billed for 10 case managers and appeared to have 2.
LAist, Oct 2, 2024
06Proof it was deliveredSomething you can check
Proof it was deliveredDark
The Pentagon has failed all 8 of its full financial audits.
Defense News, Dec 19, 2025
Proof it was deliveredDark
Minnesota: $18B billed to 14 high-risk programs since 2018. A prosecutor says half or more may be fraud.
KAXE / Minnesota News, Dec 19, 2025
Proof it was deliveredDark
LA spends over $1B a year on homelessness. No city staff is assigned to monitor results.
Spectrum News, Mar 6, 2025

No receipt by design

Money you can't follow at all

Some spending never had a trail to begin with.

$2.3Tin tax breaks in FY2026

Spending through the tax code. No public list of who got how much.

Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
$101.1Bin intelligence budgets

FY2025: $73.3B National Intelligence Program + $27.8B Military Intelligence Program. Two numbers. Everything else is classified.

Office of the Director of National Intelligence · U.S. Department of Defense (via GlobalSecurity.org)
$4.65Tin Pentagon assets

The books have never passed an audit.

Defense News
$283Bin pandemic tax credits

The IRS never made the improper-payment estimate the law requires.

U.S. Government Accountability Office

Local governments, 2026

91,729 governments. 51,813 with no website on file.

Counted from the Census Bureau's 2026 list of every county, city, township, special district and school district. Share with no website listed:

Townships76%
Special districts70%
Municipalities49%
Counties26%
School districts6%

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2026 Census of Governments: government units file (Govt_Units_2026_Final.xlsx). "No website listed" means the Census directory has none on file for that government.

FraudBadOne receipt
U.S. Air Force · C-17 spare parts
  1. ItemHand soap dispenser, C-17↗
  2. Markup over commercial price7,943%↗
  3. Overpaid on the dispensers$149,072↗
  4. Parts the Air Force overpaid for12 of 46↗
  5. Parts it couldn't tell if the price was fair25 of 46↗
  6. What a fair price was, by law████████████████
fraudbad.comNo taxation without receipts

What one receipt shows

The $149,072 soap dispensers

When the Pentagon's inspector general compared what the Air Force paid for 46 spare parts against what they should cost, it found a soap dispenser marked up 7,943%. For 25 of the 46 parts, the Air Force couldn't even say whether the price was fair.

Nobody needed an investigation to see it. They needed the price paid next to what everyone else pays. The RECEIPTS Act would make that kind of comparison public, starting with federal orders over $25,000 placed through GSA's schedules.

Sign the Receipts Act ↗

America.co · The RECEIPTS Act

Want to stop it?Sign the Receipts Act.

Public money should come with a receipt anyone can check. The RECEIPTS Act starts with one rule for federal purchases over $25,000 from GSA's buying catalog: publish the price paid next to what other agencies paid for the same thing.

Sign the Receipts Act ↗

A citizen-authored working draft hosted on America.co. It has not been introduced in Congress.