re: How does collected tax get accounted for? Do we seperate it?

No, a budget is forecast of future spending, giving you an amount to be spent.....and yes, I understand a budget on a project is used...point being, when I interstates are crumbling, yet we have taxes specifically for that, where is the exact monies for those projects? And , to your point, if a contractor comes in over budget after giving a bid, he is excluded from govmnt contracts for 5 yrs..