This is the main reason why countries are trying to scare their citizens and make them pay upfront. You don't know where your taxes go and they can always think of some reason why this or that hasn't been done. A great improvement in this system is local taxation. In this system your money go directly to your local city council and are spent on roads, parks, pavements, schools, police, and so on, and you can demand them to give you the budget and value of the projects completed in the previous tax year. It makes it much harder for the money to vanish. Unfortunately not many countries allow for that. Most prefer all taxes to go to the capital and then be divided between local governments, so that they all get equal share (equality is another socialist idea that never seems to work as intended).