Thirteen Percent Of Floridians' Personal Income Goes To Support State And Local Government

TALLAHASSEE - The latest Budget Watch Report by Florida TaxWatch analyzes the overall cost of state and local government on Florida taxpayers. While Florida is known as a tax-friendly state, taxes don’t tell the whole story about how much the government costs its citizens. A better measure to calculate the overall cost of government is to use “own source revenue,” which includes not just taxes, but all other sources of revenue like fees, charges for services, special assessments, impact fees and net lottery revenue.

The report found that, when taking into account all revenue sources, state and local government will cost Floridians $121 billion in fiscal year 2015-16. This accounts for thirteen percent of Floridian’s personal income. However, this is lower than last year, where the cost of government was 13.2 percent of Floridian’s personal income, and much lower than fiscal year 2007-08, where 15.8 percent of personal income went to government.

Florida TaxWatch will report the cost of government to taxpayers annually to provide a measure of the growth in government relative to its citizens’ ability to pay.

The December 2015 Budget Watch Report can be found here.