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I don't know how Amtrak came up with its number, $1.46 per taxpayer, but it seems low. In FY09 Amtrak had an operating loss of $1,3 billion. In 2009, of the more than 140 million people who filed a federal income tax return, only 81.9 million paid federal income taxes. The average subsidy for taxpayers, as opposed to tax filers, in FY09 was $15.44.  Advocates arguing that Amtrak's subsidy is chump change are correct, as are the advocates for crop insurance, essential air services program, tax free funding for TVA, etc. On and on they go. Each little bucket of chump change adds deficit and debt. The other question, as some have noted, is whether the money Amtrak loses, mostly on the long distance trains, could be better deployed, i.e. passenger rail for DFW to Houston and San Antonio.     Amtrak's FY09 operating loss consists of the cash loss on operations as well as the depreciation and the interest amortization. Amtrak shows federal operating subsidies and capital subsidies in separate buckets.  Thus, the operating subsidy appears to be much smaller. However, proper accounting is to amortize the capitalized expenditures over the expected life of the asset, which is what I have done, and flow it through the income statement to determine the annual operating loss.     Averages can be deceptive.  In FY09 approximately 12 per cent of filers had Ajustable Gross Income of more than $100,000, but they paid 75% of the federal income taxes.  If we assume that they proportionally covered Amtrak's losses in FY09, the taxpayer cost for Amtrak would be $54.88 for the top 12 per cent of taxpayers.   Caution is the word when taking numbers from news reports.  More often than not they are either spun to distort or presented superficially.   My analysis is based on personel income taxes. The federal government gets revenues from corporations, businesses, partnerships, leases, excise taxes, user fees, payroll taxes, etc. One could argue that some of these monies flow to Amtrak since many of them go into the U.S. Treasury. Or one could argue that the subsidy for Amtrak is understated because it does not take into account the fact that Amtrak pays no taxes, which is an indirect subsidy.
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