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Their biggest source of income is the Federal Reserve right now (The reserve issues Bank notes to the government so that the US mint can print more dollars.) But the government does get money from our tax dollars and any fines or fees we pay when dealing with government agencies.

Actually, the Federal Reserve has nothing to do with income for the Federal government, nor does the Mint. Both of those organizations are concerned with the US money supply, which is a completely different topic.

In the current era, the US Federal Government receives almost all of its revenue from two sources: income taxes on individuals, and corporate taxes on businesses. Over the past 100 years, the proportion that personal taxes and Business Taxes provide has flip flopped: around 1930, the proportion was 2/3 from business, and 1/3 from individuals. Now, it's the reverse: 1/3 from business, and 2/3 from individuals.

For individual income tax, most of it is payroll taxes - those taxes which come straight out of your paycheck (FICA, Medicare, and Labor income tax). About 1/3 of the revenue from individual taxes comes from investment taxes - taxes on interest, dividends, and capital gains. This later number has been shrinking slowly over time, as the tax rates on investment income has been lowered faster than that on labor. Additionally, investment income revenue varies considerably more than labor revenue - in good economic times, the investment income amounts are large, while in bad times, they are much smaller. Labor income tax revenue is much more stable; it tents to only slowly move up or down, following longer-term economic cycles, rather than short-term ones.

Other additional sources of revenue for the federal government are, in rough order of amounts:

  • User Fees - these are the fastest increasing source of income, as Congress finds it politically easy to raise these fees, since they're not "taxes". User Fees are costs paid by individuals who want something specific from the Government; entrance fees to national parks/museums, fees for permits and licenses, and similar.
  • Fines - mostly from (civil) court cases where the guilty party must pay the government. A big source here is environmental damage cases, where fines attempt to offset at least some of the government's expenses in cleanups.
  • Confiscated property - this is mostly from drug-based criminal convictions. Property is forfeited to the government, which then either sells it for revenue, or apportions it back to state and local governments for disposal.
  • Estate Tax ("Death Tax") - taxes imposed on the very wealth's estate when a person dies. This amount has shrunk considerably over the past 20 years, as the rates on such estates have fluctuated wildly.

Note that these together still account for less than 1% of the total federal revenue. There are other minor sources of income for the federal government, some of which are ordinary (leasing of certain federal establishments for private use, for example), while others strange (kickbacks for facilitating large foreign arms sales). Overall, they are insignificant totals. Remember that the annual US revenue is well over $2 Trillion, so unless the revenue source is at least several billion, it's just noise.

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