The late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan supported sending people statements of what was in their social security. His idea was that if people never saw what was in there, they'd never miss it when it was gone.

I think this is a logical extension of that idea, and its great. I'd also like to see the flip side of the receipt contain a guess for how the same tax amount would break down the following year based on current budget trends. That way you could see how the coming year is different from the current year. Complaining about NASA funding is one thing -- seeing that they only get 20 bucks while Social Security gets over a thousand? Puts the situation in much sharper contrast.

It's strange that the government works in such an arcane fashion. A simple thing like a receipt for your taxes is probably very hard or impossible to accomplish. It took many years for Moynihan to get his SS statements. I have doubts that this would ever fly.

But it is certainly a simple and profound idea.