What data sources show federal taxes paid and federal spending received by state?

1. The Treasury’s FiscalData — the official flows and the Monthly Treasury Statement

The most authoritative source of aggregate federal receipts and outlays is the U.S. Treasury’s FiscalData site, which hosts the Monthly Treasury Statement (MTS) and theme pages on federal revenue and spending; these pages let users download official receipts by category (individual income, payroll, corporate, excise, etc.) and federal outlays by program and function, and are the starting point for allocating amounts to states ^{[1] [5] [2]}.

2. IRS collections and state-level tax receipts — raw collections used to measure taxes paid by state

State-by-state federal tax collections are commonly drawn from IRS datasets (and mirrored by projects such as usgovernmentrevenue and related charting sites), which tabulate gross federal tax collections by state, territory and district; these figures form the numerator when asking “how much did residents and businesses in X pay?” ^{[6] [7] [8]}.

3. USAFacts and similar compilers — matched spending-to-taxes analyses

USAFacts compiles federal spending attributed to states and compares it to estimated federal taxes generated locally to label “donor” and “recipient” states; its methodology attempts a broad attribution of spending (program dollars, contracts, benefit flows) and is widely cited in media mapping exercises that identify which states send more than they receive ^{[3] [9]}.

4. Rockefeller Institute’s Balance of Payments portal — state-centered reconciliations and methodological transparency

The Rockefeller Institute provides a “Balance of Payments” portal focused explicitly on state‑level reconciliations between federal taxes paid and federal funds received, and is used as a reference for researchers wanting a consistent, state‑oriented accounting framework and historical series ^[4].

5. Private “dependency” rankings and the importance of methodology

Commercial and advocacy analyses — WalletHub, MoneyGeek, WorldPopulationReview, the California Budget & Policy Center and other state think tanks — publish digestible rankings (return-per-dollar, percent of state revenue from federal sources, balance of payments) but apply different inclusions (e.g., federal contracts, pandemic-era COVID spending, Medicaid formula counts), producing divergent conclusions such as which states are most federally dependent or which are donor states ^{[10] [11] [12] [13]}.

6. Why different sources disagree — timing, attribution, and one‑time shocks

Differences across these sources stem from three technical choices: the reference period (federal fiscal year vs. calendar year), whether to include one‑time emergency spending such as COVID packages, and how to attribute program spending and contracts to states (some allocators use residence of recipient, others use location of federal project); these methodological choices explain why USAFacts, the Rockefeller portal, state budget centers and private sites can all point to different “donor” lists even while using overlapping raw data from Treasury and IRS ^{[3] [4] [13]}.

7. How to use the data — practical guidance for researchers

Researchers seeking to replicate or evaluate claims should start with FiscalData’s MTS and the Treasury spending pages for raw federal receipts and outlays, obtain IRS state compilations for tax collection totals, and then consult USAFacts and the Rockefeller balance portal for packaged state-level reconciliations while closely reading each source’s attribution rules; for policy signaling, state budget centers and independent analysts provide contextualized writeups that flag COVID distortions and program‑specific drivers like Medicaid or defense contracting ^{[1] [5] [6] [3] [4] [13]}.