State-level Tax Expenditures for Climate Policy in the United States

This dataset comes from state tax expenditure reports. Nearly every state prepares an annual or biennial report estimating the revenues that are foregone as a result of tax incentives. We extract data from the most recent report, typically prepared for fiscal year 2022 or 2023, and we collect data from the most recently completed fiscal year. For each tax expenditure, we collect the following information: the name of the incentive, the type of subsidy (eg. deduction vs credit), the source of taxation (eg. income tax vs sales tax), and the estimated amount of revenue foregone. Where available, we also extract information about the date when the tax incentive was enacted and any other information about the purpose and targeting of the incentive. In a small number of cases, the reports did not clearly specify a fiscal year, and we were forced to make an educated guess. There were also a small number of instances when states did not provide an estimate for a particular incentive due to confidentiality reasons, often because of the small number of recipients. Having identified a list of subsidies, we classify the data into mitigation and adaptation. For the mitigation subsidies, we adopt a further classification scheme according to the economic sectoral categories utilised by the IPCC: energy, industry, transport, buildings, and agriculture, forestry & land use. We also identify adaptation efforts. Separately, we collected fossil fuel related tax expenditures and include them here.