Average spending for family of four?

Answer 1

maybe anywhere from $100 through $350

Answer 2

In most of the US it's about 40% of income.

That depends definitely on where they live. In Massachusetts for instance, the average family earns $51,000. Of that about $3000 goes to federal taxes, $5000 to state taxes, and $8,000 to property and local taxes. After that and housing expenses are deducted that leaves about $25,000, food and clothing costs about $8,000 a year and is not taxable. That leaves $17,000. Transportation costs (fuel) are about $2000 a year of which ~$1200 is federal and state taxes. Medical costs are about $5000 a year (some of that is taxed) leaving $10000. From that $10,000 is about $1500 for utilities of which about $900 is taxes, this leaves $8500 for sundry items (taxable) and other discretionary spending (again taxable) the states sales tax rate is 7% so that would be about $600. Some items like alcohol and tobacco also have excise taxes on them and lottery tickets are pure 100% tax. Assuming a portion goes to these items we can assign a tax estimate of about $400 to these items on average.

So, by adding up these various taxes this hypothetical average family spends about $20,000 of their income on taxes. That is nearly 40%. This does not include other fee for services provided by many communities such as sewer/water or garbage pickup, license and registration fees ...etc. which increases the tax costs.

***It should be noted that as a person's income increases, though the income tax paid increases, the actual tax burden decreases as fee for service and excise and sales taxes are finite taxes and do not increase as a function of the increase in income. Thus, to a point [estimated to be about $80,000 or so] a person's tax burden as a percent of income increases until this point is surpassed, then it rapidly decreases toward about 24% of income for the wealthiest, who do not "earn" the majority of their income by working.

Thus they pay the adjusted minimum tax rate of about 15% plus 8% on capital gains and most other taxes amount to less than 1% of their income [we're talking billionaires]. Some of their tax burden though monetarily much greater than the average, can be offset by losses and charitable donations. Many donate tens of millions if not hundreds of millions to charities.

Answer 3

we are an Australian family of 6 we spend on average 350 plus on groceries a week i would say for a family of four would be aprox 250 plus it depends on the age of the children