In the United States the budget for each fiscal year contains detailed information on the outlays intended by the federal government and the receipts expected, including those from trust funds. The budget also divides authorized expenditure into that which can be carried out without action by Congress and that which requires further authorization. In any year, about half of federal expenditure requires authorization from Congress; by withholding this authorization, Congress is able to force changes in the government’s budgetary policy. The budget also summarizes the outstanding debt of the federal government and estimates the size of the surplus or deficit expected on the basis of the revenue and expenditure projected in the budget.

The U.S. budget is presented as a coherent whole for lengthy consideration by Congress, during which time it is often substantially revised. This joint consideration of revenue and expenditure is also common in most European countries. Practice in the United Kingdom, and in other countries with a British parliamentary tradition, continues to reflect the historical separation of revenue and expenditure. The U.K. budget consists of a number of different documents, with only limited attempts being made to relate one to another. A sketchy report of the government’s intentions is given in an Autumn Statement, usually published in November, and detailed expenditure plans are provided in February or March in a White Paper. The U.K. budget, usually presented in March, is mainly concerned with taxation and is represented in a separate volume entitled Financial Statement and Budget Report. This gives a general outline of budgetary strategy, details of proposed tax changes, and estimates of likely revenues, as well as details of such items as capital receipts from asset sales and the size of the contingency reserve of unallocated money to cover unforeseen events.

Partly because of this fragmentation of the U.K. budget, and the difficulty of relating the public expenditure White Paper to the Financial Statement and Budget Report, debate is limited, and it is rare for any detail to be changed after the documents are published. The fragmentation of the budget is exacerbated further by the presentation of details of social security expenditure in yet another document.

Expenditures authorized under a national budget are divided into two main categories. The first is the government purchase of goods and services in order to provide services such as education, health care, or defense. The second is the payment of social security and other transfers to individuals and the payment of subsidies to industrial and commercial companies. Both types are usually labeled “public expenditure,” and in many countries attention usually focuses on the aggregate of the two. This obscures important differences in the economic significance of the two items, however. The first represents the public sector’s claim on total national resources; the second the scale of its redistribution within the private sector.

In most Western countries, the share of the public sector in total economic activity averages between 20 and 30 percent. This reflects the proportion of workers who are employed in the public sector or in publicly financed activities, the proportion of national output generated there, and the proportion of incomes derived for productive services that is earned by public sector employees.

Some of these activities yield commercial revenues—the postal service, for example. Most have to be financed by taxation. In addition, the government raises taxation in order to redistribute income within the private sector of the economy. It taxes some activities and subsidizes others—through investment credits, for example. On a larger scale, it uses the benefit and social security system to make payments to needy individuals and raises taxes in order to subsidize those who warrant it. With this redistributive activity, plus the direct government productive activity financed from legislation, the total share of incomes taken in taxation is higher than the share of government in total production. It averages around 40 percent in Western economies.

In addition to direct expenditures, attention has been drawn to “tax expenditures.” If the government favours a particular activity—such as investment—grants or tax concessions may be awarded to that activity. The two procedures have much the same effect on investment and on government revenues, but one appears to raise public expenditure and the other to reduce taxation. It has been suggested that these tax expenditures—tax reductions motivated by an economic or social objective—should be the subject of a tax expenditure budget similar to the public expenditure budget, and several countries have now moved in that direction.

For all private and public purposes within the economy, the scale of public activity is best measured as a proportion of national income: the total of incomes generated or (equivalently) of expenditures on goods and services.

The overall proportion of national income that is collected in taxes, raised from profits on government activities, or borrowed varies widely in the developed nations. This variation reflects different national decisions concerning the proportion of a nation’s activity deemed most appropriate to have carried out by the various levels of government or by government agencies. Much of the variation occurs because of choices over the provision of health care (mostly public in the United Kingdom, mostly private in the United States) and over the level and importance of transfer payments.

By the late 20th century the share of national income devoted to public expenditure varied from almost 60 percent in countries such as Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands to about 30 percent in Australia, the United States, Japan, and Greece. The United Kingdom, Italy, France, and Germany all devote between 40 and 50 percent of their national incomes to public spending.

Expenditures on transfers also vary widely, depending partly on how redistributive the government wishes to be, partly on how much of this redistribution is carried out through the tax system, and partly on factors such as the number of old people and the level of unemployment. The dominant payment in every country is for old-age pensions, and the amount depends on how well-developed private sector pensions are. Another factor is the extent to which the government chooses to use direct subsidies rather than tax concessions to stimulate the economy.

In the United States in the late 20th century, between 25 and 30 percent of the federal budget was being spent on defense and a similar amount on social security and Medicare payments. Only a fairly small proportion of the federal budget was spent on other items, with about 10 percent of the overall budget being devoted to the salaries and other remuneration of federal civilian employees. Most other provision of public services—education, roads, welfare, public health, hospitals, police, sanitation—were provided by state and local governments, which spent about three times as much as the federal government on the provision of civilian services. Both levels of government in the United States raise taxes from a variety of sources. The relative importance of state, local, and federal expenditure on civil functions has varied considerably, with the role of the federal government being greatest before World War II and declining after the war.

In Europe public expenditure was both larger (as a share of national income) and more centralized during this same time. The United Kingdom, for example, devoted about 12 percent of national income to centrally funded social security programs; 5 percent each to defense, the health service, and education; and smaller amounts to industrial support, law and order, and subsidies of various kinds. Although most revenue is raised centrally in the United Kingdom, administration of many programs is carried out at local levels, partly financed by a local property tax and partly through grants from the central government. Local authorities are usually regarded as separate decision-making units, but the role of central government as a provider of finance that sets rules and imposes penalties has become dominant.