US Total Government Revenue Since 1900

Government revenue at the start of the 20th century was about 7 percent of GDP. It rapidly increased throughout the first half of the century, reaching about 27 percent of GDP by the early 1950s, after a peak of 30 percent of GDP achieved at the end of World War II.

The 1950s began a steady revenue increase to about 35 percent of GDP by 2000. Since 2000 government revenue has hit over 35 percent at the peak of the business cycle while plunging to 30 percent of GDP during recessions.

Since 2000 total government revenue has stopped increasing, and appears to have reached a ceiling slightly below 35 percent of GDP.

Federal, State, Local Revenue in 20th Century

At the start of the 20th century, about half of government revenue was local government revenue. Out of a total of 7 percent of GDP, a full 3.5 percent was collected at the local level. Federal revenue spiked in World War I, but by the mid 1920s, local government revenue and federal revenue were about equal at 5 percent of GDP, with state revenue below 2 percent of GDP. During the 1930s this changed, as state revenue surged to 5 percent of GDP while federal revenue increased to 7 to 8 percent of GDP and local revenue increased to about 6 percent of GDP. After the spike of World War II, when federal revenue briefly hit almost 24 percent of GDP, state and local governments entered the 1950s at about 4 percent of GDP while federal revenue fluctuated between 16 and 18 percent of GDP. Since the 1950s state and local revenue has steadily increased, with state revenue reaching 10 percent of GDP and local revenue reaching 6.5 percent of GDP in 2000.

After major revenue fluctuations in the dot-com recession of 2001-02 and the Great Recession of 2008-09 federal revenue in the mid 2010s was about 17 percent GDP, state revenue 8 percent GDP and local revenue 6.5 percent GDP

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Revenue Data Sources

Revenue data is from official government sources.

• Federal revenue data since 1962 comes from the president’s budget.
  
• All other revenue data comes from the US Census Bureau.

Gross Domestic Product data comes from US Bureau of Economic Analysis and measuringworth.com.

Detailed table of revenue data sources here.

Federal revenue data begins in 1792.

State and local revenue data begins in 1820.

State and local revenue data for individual states begins in 1957.

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