When officials of individual states make projections, they incorporate specific changes in spending when they are known, such as changes in debt services based on scheduled new borrowing and any repayment of old bonds. Individual state and federal projections would normally include future changes in spending patterns, such a multi-year programs to increase education quality, and future tax rate changes, such as multi-year tax reduction plans, if they have already been enacted into law. The projections made for all states in this paper do not reflect these.

For comparisons involving 50 states, considering state government in isolation from local government makes for misleading comparisons because of differences in state-local divisions of tax sources and spending responsibilities. For example, 100% of school spending in Hawaii is state-financed while only about 10% of school spending in New Hampshire is state-financed.

Some differences between state and local spending are meaningless. For example, nearly all states require a minimum tax on property to finance schools. In some states, this is a statewide property tax, in others it is a tax which school districts must levy to receive state aid. In some states, it is a mixture of the two.