November 13, 2013 3:17PM # The Black Budget, a Sense of Magnitudes By [Steve H. Hanke](https://www.cato.org/people/steve-h-hanke) --- SHARE On October 28th, I wrote a blog post, “[The NSA’s Rent Is Too Damn High](https://www.cato.org/blog/nsas-rent-too-damn-high),” in which I looked at the $52.6 billion price tag for America’s spook infrastructure – the so-called “black budget.” When allocated across every American taxpayer, this staggering sum comes out to $574 per taxpayer, per year. But, there are other edifying ways of gaining perspective on such a whopping amount of money. Doing so is important. Indeed, according to John Maynard Keynes’ biographer, Lord Skidelsky, Keynes believed that a good economist must always have “a sense of magnitudes.” We can get a sense of magnitudes by looking at this year’s black budget as a portion of the major sources of the federal government’s revenues. The table below tells that tale: | **Source of Federal Revenue 2012** | **Amount $ Billion** | **Black Budget $ Billion** | **Black Budget as % of Revenue Source** | |---|---|---|---| | **Individual Income Taxes** | $1,132.21 | $52.60 | 4.6% | | **Corporate Income Taxes** | $242.29 | $52.60 | 21.7% | | **Social Insurance Taxes** | $845.31 | $52.60 | 6.2% | | **Excise Taxes** | $79.06 | $52.60 | 66.5% | | **Estate and Gift Taxes** | $13.97 | $52.60 | 376.4% | | **Customs Duties** | $30.31 | $52.60 | 173.6% | | **Miscellaneous Receipts** | $107.01 | $52.60 | 49.2% | | **Deficit (Borrowing)** | $1,086.96 | $52.60 | 4.8% | | *Source: Congressional Budget Office*** | ##### Related Tags [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).