GASB 77 Reporting by State Governments in 2019

Updated 01/31/2020

Statement No. 77 on Tax Abatement Disclosures (GASB 77) set forth by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) requires compliant public budgets to report how much revenue the government body loses yearly to economic development tax abatement programs. Good Jobs First tracks these disclosures as part of its mission to promote transparency and accountability.

As of January 31 2020, 32 states have published their Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports for FY 2019: 27 of them complied with GASB Statement No. 77 and disclosed $5.2 billion in foregone tax revenue. The chart below shows the cost of economic development incentives from 2017 to 2019 for each state:

• New York accounts for over a quarter of tax-based subsidy spending among the 27 states that reported so far;
• While more than half of the states reported larger amount in 2019 than 2017, Idaho, Louisiana, and Oregon saw substantial and continuous decreases over the years;
• Maryland and Kansas are the only two states that reported passive revenue loss due to local government programs;
• Hawaii, North Dakota, South Carolina, and West Virginia, as in the past, did not include a note on tax abatement disclosures as required by GASB Statement No. 77;
• Georgia listed the programs but declined to disclose the amount due to taxpayer confidentiality; a handful of states also declined to disclose the amounts for certain programs if there are too few recipients.

Click on the link below to download the excel spreadsheet, which contains the details about the 195 tax abatement programs reported by states so far for FY 2019.

Download the excel spreadsheet to see program details (xlsx, 48.6 KB)