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How much per year do individual tax payers fund snap benefits and also corporate tax breaks?
Executive summary
Federal SNAP (food stamp) spending was about $100.3 billion in FY2024, serving roughly 41–42 million people at an average benefit near $187–$190 per person per month, or about $2,250 per person per year (USAFacts, CBPP, Pew) [1] [2] [3]. By contrast, estimates of “corporate tax breaks” are reported as tax expenditures: corporate tax expenditures were about $188 billion in 2024, while total individual income tax expenditures were far larger ($1.7 trillion) and total tax expenditures roughly $1.9 trillion [4]. Available sources do not provide a single, simple “per individual taxpayer” division of those corporate breaks, but using the $188 billion corporate figure divided across U.S. adults or households is a rough way to translate scale — a method and assumptions that change the result materially [4].
1. SNAP’s price tag and per-recipient math
SNAP’s annual outlay in FY2024 is reported at about $100.3 billion, and program averages show roughly 41–42 million people participating in recent years with average monthly benefits near $187–$190 per person [1] [2] [5]. Converting the per-month figure to an annual benefit gives about $2,244–$2,280 per participant per year (average monthly ~$187–$190 × 12) — but that is benefit received, not a direct “taxpayer cost” per filer or household [2] [3].
2. What “per taxpayer” can mean — several reasonable ways to frame it
There are multiple legitimate ways to express “how much individual taxpayers fund SNAP”: (a) program cost divided by number of taxpayers, (b) program cost divided by all U.S. adults or all residents, or (c) the share of federal revenue that funds SNAP and how that reflects on an average filer. Some outlets divide total program cost by U.S. population (an approach that yields relatively small per-person numbers — e.g., a broad article notes a per-capita framing around hundreds of dollars), but the sources here do not settle on one canonical per-taxpayer figure and do not compute an “average net burden” after accounting for the many filers who pay little or no federal income tax [6] [1].
3. Corporate tax breaks: headline numbers and what they cover
The Peterson Foundation-style accounting and JCT summaries show “tax expenditures” — legally authorized deductions, credits and special rates — cost the Treasury large sums. One aggregation places corporate tax expenditures at about $188 billion in 2024, while total tax expenditures across the federal government were roughly $1.9 trillion that year; individual income tax expenditures were estimated at $1.7 trillion [4]. Other reporting highlights specific packages and new rules that add or accelerate corporate tax relief, with some single laws or regulatory changes described as providing “well over $1 trillion” in corporate relief when measured across certain calculations or time windows [7] [8].
4. Translating corporate breaks into a per-person number — caveats
None of the supplied sources compute a single “per individual taxpayer” dollar figure for corporate tax breaks. If one divided the $188 billion corporate tax expenditures by about 130 million U.S. adult taxpayers (an illustrative divisor not supplied in these sources), the implied per-taxpayer annual amount would be in the low thousands; divide by the whole U.S. population (~330 million) and the per-person figure falls into the hundreds. But sources explicitly caution that tax expenditure tallies depend on definitions, timeframes, and whether you count permanent vs. temporary provisions — and recent 2025 law changes and Treasury/IRS regulatory guidance have altered corporate liabilities further [4] [7].
5. Competing narratives and political context
Advocates for cutting corporate tax breaks argue these expenditures drain revenue and benefit wealthy shareholders and multinationals, pointing to large JCT or academic estimates of ten-year costs [8] [9]. Proponents of corporate tax cuts, including some conservative analysts, argue lower corporate rates and selective breaks spur investment and broader growth — a claim seen in Cato’s framing that cutting rates might not sharply reduce revenue in practice [10]. Meanwhile, budget-cut proposals tied to reducing SNAP and other programs have been justified as offsetting tax cuts, a linkage repeatedly raised in policy reporting [5] [11].
6. What reporting does not (yet) give us
Available sources do not calculate a consensus, apples-to-apples “per individual taxpayer” dollar for both SNAP and corporate tax breaks using a single methodology; they also do not provide a neat breakdown of how much each individual filer directly “pays for” SNAP versus how much each filer “receives” indirectly via lower corporate tax revenue [6] [4]. For a precise per-taxpayer comparison you would need to choose (and disclose) a denominator (filers, households, or population) and time window, and account for recent 2025 law changes and regulatory actions that alter both program spending and tax expenditure estimates [7] [12].
Conclusion
If your goal is an accessible comparison: SNAP spending is roughly $100 billion a year serving ~42 million people (about $2.2k per participant annually), while corporate tax expenditures are on the order of $188 billion in 2024, with larger multi-year packages and regulatory changes pushing much larger sums into the trillions depending on measurement and timeframe [1] [4] [7]. To convert those totals into a usable “per taxpayer” number, pick and state your denominator (tax filers, households, or total population) and the time window, and note that recent 2025 legislation and Treasury moves materially affect the corporate side [7] [4].