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Show Foundation Reports Government Costs Federal, state and local government gov-ernment in the U. S. cost the typical family of four persons $2,400 last year. This was the highlight of a study released by Utah Foundation, the private, non-profit government research organization. General expenditures by all levels of government total $101 billion last year. This amount was approximately $4.1 billion more than the 1955 expenditure total. National defense accounted for $40.4 billion, or 40 per cent of all government spending in 1956. Education was the second cost- ing for the year. This is a direct reversal from the preceding fiscal fis-cal year when government revenue rev-enue was $3.6 billion less than expenditures. General government govern-ment revenue in fiscal 1955 was $93.5 billion. The individual income tax produced pro-duced $33.7 billion or 32.1 per cent of all government general revenue during fiscal 1956. Corporation Cor-poration income taxes wielded $21.8 billion. The third most important im-portant government revenue was sales and excise taxes, such as the general sales tax and special excise taxes on motor fuel, tobacco to-bacco products, alcoholic beverages bever-ages and other items. This source yielded $19.2 billion in 1956. Other important revenue in come last year was the property taxes, $11.7 billion; death and gift taxes, $1.5 billion; motor vehicle ve-hicle and operators' licenses, $1.4 billion, all other taxes, $2.3 billion, bil-lion, and charges for service, interest in-terest earnings, and other miscellaneous mis-cellaneous revenue, $13.4 billion. bil-lion. Foundation analysts observe that more than 70 per cent of all government revenue is collected col-lected by the federal government with state and local revenue accounting ac-counting for less than 30 per cent of the total. This is almost a direct di-rect reversal of the situation in 1940 when federal taxes equaled 38.6 per cent of the total and the state and local share was 61.4 per cent. liest activity, with $14.2 billion in public funds being devoted for that purpose last year. Interest payments on the growing government gov-ernment debt in U. S. required $7.3 billion in public expenditures. expendi-tures. Actualy, more pubic funds were spent for interest payments ast year than for either highways high-ways or public welfare. The report points out that total general revenue collected by all governmental units in 1956 was $105 billion, or about $4 billion more than all government spend- |