Where Do Local Governments Get the Most of Their Revenue

Local governments collected $1.7 cardinal of general revenue in 2017. Revenue from property, sales, and other taxes totaled $707 billion, or 42 percent of overall revenue. Intergovernmental transfers accounted for 36 percent of local systemic receipts in 2017 (figure 1).

Local governments include county governments, municipalities, townships, special districts (such as piss and sewage authorities), and school districts.

INTERGOVERNMENTAL TRANSFERS

Local governments received about 32 percent of their general revenue from state of matter government transfers (including hearsay federal funds) and 4 pct directly from the federal government. Transfers for educational activity programs account for over two-thirds of nation government transfers to localities. Meantime, housing-program transfers are about 40 percent of regime transfers to local governments.

OWN-SOURCE Tax revenue

Localized governments collected $509 million from property taxes in 2017, operating theater 30 pct of local government overall taxation. This was localities' largest single source of revenue enhancement revenue. Sales taxes (general and selective) provided topical anesthetic governments $124 billion (7 percent of general revenue) and individual income taxes accounted for $33 one thousand million (2 percent). All different taxes—including corporate income taxes, hotel taxes, and business license taxes—provided $40 billion in revenue (2 percent). Charges and miscellaneous fees, such As water, sewerage, and parking meter fees collected by gathering operating room county governments, provided $385 billion (23 percent of local anaesthetic general revenue).

CHANGING SOURCES

Since 1977, the share of local general revenue from taxes has remained steady at about 40 percent. However, the composition of revenue enhancement gross has changed somewhat. The donation of property taxes to general revenue declined from 34 percent in 1977 to 30 percent in 1979, strike down to a low of 27 percent in 2000, then returned to 30 per centum in recent years. In the meantime, revenue from sales taxes steadily inflated from 5 percent to 7 percent between 1977 to 2017 (figure 2).

The percentage from intergovernmental transfers too fluctuated reasonably o'er time, falling from 43 percent of general revenue in 1977 to 36 percent in 2017. Tax income from charges, fees, and miscellaneous sources enhanced from 15 percentage to 23 percent in 1985 and has remained roughly at that plane since then (figure 2).

Tenacious-Terminus REVENUE GROWTH

Although local government income was or so the same congeneric to gross domestic cartesian product in 1977 (8.6 percent) and 2017 (8.7 percent), it has fluctuated over the historic period (figure 3). The percentage fell to a low of 8.0 per centum in 1984 and sick at 9.9 percent in 2009.

Much of the change in local government revenue relation to the economic system resulted from maximising and diminuendo transfers from federal and tell governments. Transfers fell from 1977 through most of the 1980s but increased slow though the 1990s. This source of revenue is mostly cyclical; it grew sharply during the 2001 and the 2007–09 recessions, receding in both cases as the saving healed (figure 4).

Updated Crataegus laevigata 2020

Further Reading

Randall, Megan, Spencer Tracy Gordon, Solomon Greene, and Erin Huffer. 2018. "Follow the Money: How to Track Federal Funding to Local Governments." Washington DC: Urban Found.

Gordon, Tracy. 2018. "Predicting Municipal Fiscal Hurt: Aspiration or World?" Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Gordon, Tracy, Richard Auxier, and John Iselin. 2016. "Assessing Fiscal Capacities of States: A Symbolical Receipts Organization–Representative Expenditure System Approach, Financial year 2012." Washington DC: Urban Institute.

Where Do Local Governments Get the Most of Their Revenue

Source: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-sources-revenue-local-governments

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