The Recovery Board, via the Office of Tax Analysis, has a new set of snazzy charts and graphs breaking down Recovery Act tax obligations, from March to December 2009. There isn't anything particularly newsworthy in these charts, since we've known the relative sizes of the expenditures for a while now, but they are very useful in seeing the expenditures over time, which is a new trick. I added part of one of the more interesting charts below; just be aware that more current estimates place the tax expenditure amount obligated closer to $120 billion.

The main take-away from the chart is that thus far, the Making Work Pay credit is far larger than any other single credit, with only all business tax credits combined coming close to it. This should continue for the rest of the Act's life.

Speaking of charts, I have to admit that the Board has been pretty good about putting up visual guides to the Recovery Act. Each new release of recipient data is accompanied by a set of charts showing the composition of the current release, and comparing it to earlier quarters. But the Board has an almost bewildering amount of data at its disposal, and I'd love to see them do more with it. For instance, it would be great to see a set comparing the federal agencies by project status. The site has an excellent set of charts on the late reporters, showing them by funding type (grant, loan, or contract) and by recipient type (prime or sub), but what if they expanded it out to include by agency or by state? I know ideas like these are why the Board made the recipient reports available for public download, so that groups like OMB Watch can take the data and do interesting things with it, but while we're working, why can't the Board take a crack at it itself?