Source: Tax Policy Center
Latest Data: 2021
Frequency: Annual

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), “Personal income is the income received by, or on behalf of, all persons from all sources: from participation as laborers in production, from owning a home or business, from the ownership of financial assets, and from government and business in the form of transfers. It includes income from domestic sources as well as the rest of world. It does not include realized or unrealized capital gains or losses.”

The Federation of Tax Administrators defines “Own Source Revenue” as the total revenue collected by state and local government from its own sources, such as property, income and sales taxes, and “other taxes (such as stadium taxes and business license taxes)...charges and miscellaneous fees, such as water, sewerage, and parking meter fees collected by municipal or county governments,” but excludes federal transfers.

The data reported here represent the total state and local own source revenue for each state in a given year expressed as a percentage of the personal income.

For example, in 2015 the state of Illinois generated a state and local own-source general revenue of $94,660 million and the personal income reported by BEA was $652.69 billion. The revenue as a percentage of personal income for 2015 in the state of Illinois was (94660/655269)* 100 = 14.5 percent.

The revenue as a percentage of personal income ranking uses a scale of 1-50, from highest to lowest, to rank the states such that a state where revenue as a percentage of personal income was highest was ranked number one, and the state where revenue as a percentage of personal income was lowest is number 50.  For example, in 2015, North Dakota was ranked number one and had the highest revenue as a percentage of personal income at 21.9 percent. States with large natural resources, such as Alaska, North Dakota and Wyoming, rank highest because the states collect large amounts of revenue from the production of those resources.