This week’s Monday Map is a follow up to last week’s map, which showed the growth in state government spending over the past ten years. This week we have a map showing the changes in tax collections per capita, and the difference is interesting – most states actually had a decrease in taxA tax is a mandatory payment or charge collected by local, state, and national governments from individuals or businesses to cover the costs of general government services, goods, and activities. collections per capita over the same time interval. Given that most states require a balanced budget, what’s going on? Two things – first, there’s been a huge increase in federal aid to state governments in the past few years, and secondly, the state spending figures in the previous map include various things that aren’t paid for directly from general funds, such as social insurance payments, pensions, etc., as well as state-run utilities and liquor stores.
Click on the map to enlarge it.
View previous Monday Maps here.
Share this article