Methodology
This page documents exactly how every published figure is calculated, so any of them can be reproduced independently from the archived source files. It is updated whenever the methodology changes, and every change is recorded inthe decisions log.
Sources
TaxpayerScope draws from three source families, each downloaded directly from its publishing government agency, archived unmodified with a SHA-256 hash, and mirrored into every release: the Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research (EDR)'s compiled per-county revenue and expenditure workbooks; the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index; and the Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program. Every county page's sources panel links both the original government URL and this release's own archived copy of the exact bytes used, so any figure can be traced back to its source and re-downloaded independently.
Fiscal years covered
TaxpayerScope covers 67 Florida counties, fiscal year FY2015 through fiscal year FY2024. Florida county fiscal years run from October through September, not the calendar year. No maximum fiscal year is fixed in this pipeline — a later complete fiscal year is added by the same pipeline the moment its source file is published, with no code change required.
See ADR-0010 for the full decision record.
Definitions
Total expenditures is governmental-funds spending only — the five Governmental Funds columns General, Special Revenue, Debt Service, Capital Projects, and Permanent — excluding transfer-out account codes 581 (Interfund transfer out), 586 (Intragovernmental transfer out), 588 (Non cash transfer out). Total revenue is the same governmental-funds basis, excluding account codes 381 (Interfund transfer in), 382 (Enterprise contribution to general operations).
Spending categories group account codes into a fixed, versioned set of major categories, with a named Residual for any code that does not map cleanly into one of them. Property-tax revenue is scoped to governmental account root 311 only — the county government's own reported property-tax revenue, not any individual resident's tax bill.
See ADR-0001, ADR-0008, and ADR-0009 for the full decision records.
Fund accounting
Every headline spending and revenue figure on this site is calculated on a governmental funds basis — the five columns state and local governments use for their general operating and tax-supported activity: General, Special Revenue, Debt Service, Capital Projects, and Permanent.
Enterprise funds
Enterprise and Internal Service funds — activity funded by user fees and rates rather than general tax revenue, such as utilities — are reported separately and are never folded into the headline total.
Internal transfers
Account codes 581 (Interfund transfer out), 586 (Intragovernmental transfer out), 588 (Non cash transfer out) are excluded from every governmental-fund expenditure total, because each represents money moving between a government's own funds — or already counted in another fund — rather than new spending.
Custodial funds
Custodial funds — assets a government holds on behalf of someone else, not its own operating revenue — are excluded from every headline total, for every county and every fiscal year (see Known comparability caveats below for the FY2020-21 reporting change this affects).
Inflation
Every real (inflation-adjusted) figure on this site uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, U.S. city average, series CUUR0000SA0, base period 1982-84=100. For each fiscal year, the twelve months from October of the prior calendar year through September of that fiscal year are averaged into a single fiscal-year CPI mean, matching Florida's own October-through-September fiscal year. Every real figure is expressed in the government's own latest covered fiscal year's dollars — currently FY2024 for every county currently covered — never a fixed historical year, so a figure never needs restating as later years are added to the pipeline.
See ADR-0005 for the full decision record.
Population
Population figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program (PEP). Each fiscal year uses the latest available vintage that carries a county-level estimate for that year — Vintage 2024 for fiscal years 2020 through 2024, and Vintage 2020 for fiscal years 2015 through 2019, since no single vintage spans the 2020 Census boundary. Every per-resident and real-per-resident figure divides by the population figure for that exact fiscal year, never a single blended or averaged population across years.
See ADR-0005 for the full decision record.
Per-capita calculations
Per-resident figures divide a fiscal year's total (nominal or real) by that same fiscal year's population, rounded half-up to the cent exactly once, after the division. Real per-resident figures use the real (inflation-adjusted) total divided by that year's population — never a nominal per-resident figure adjusted for inflation afterward, which would apply rounding in a different order and could disagree with it. The worked example below shows every step of one real figure computed this way, end to end.
See ADR-0005 for the full decision record.
Rounding
Every published figure is rounded exactly once, at publication — never before, and never again afterward. Per-resident figures, real and nominal alike, round half-up to the cent. Real and nominal dollar totals round half-up to the whole dollar. Ratios — growth, inflation, custodial share — round half-up to six decimal places. The fiscal-year CPI mean rounds half-up to three decimal places. Every intermediate value used inside a calculation, before its own final rounding, is kept at full precision — a published figure is never computed starting from another figure that has already been rounded.
See ADR-0010 for the full decision record.
Missing data, revisions, and corrections
A government-year with no data published is shown as a gap, never a fabricated zero. Material figures are never silently altered — a correction is recorded with its evidence.
An empty leaf cell within a fund column counts as $0 — the source file itself simply left that cell blank. A year with genuinely no data reported at all is published as null with a stated reason and rendered as a gap on the chart and table, never a $0.
Methodology changes are recorded as dated, append-only ADR revisions, each paired with a methodology_version bump — currently version 4 — never a silent edit to an existing record.
For example, Sarasota County's FY2022 revenue figures were affected by a source double-count: the source workbook's own printed total added its own 324.XXX subtotal row on top of the leaf rows it already summarized, inflating that sheet's own total. TaxpayerScope's leaf-derived sum was already correct; the reconciliation check's baseline was corrected to match it. No published figure changed. The correction and its evidence are recorded in ADR-0010.
See ADR-0010 for the full decision record.
Known comparability caveats
Two changes in how Florida governments report their finances affect comparisons across years. Both are documented decisions, not gaps in the data.
The GASB 84 custodial-fund change (FY2020-21)
Starting in fiscal year 2020-21, Florida governments began reporting a separate Custodial Funds column under GASB Statement No. 84. TaxpayerScope excludes custodial funds from every county's headline total, for every fiscal year — including years before the column existed, where the exclusion is a structural no-op. Florida's own EDR statewide reference series omits Duval County from its adjusted statewide total; TaxpayerScope's own replicated exclusion does not.
The XBRL/LOGERx reporting-system change (FY2022 and later)
Florida mandated a new electronic filing system, XBRL/LOGERx, for fiscal years ending on or after September 1, 2022. Measured directly against the archived files, this change is not a structural break in the data actually published: 0 of 67 governments gained or lost a fund-type column at the FY2021-FY2022 boundary, compared with 67 of 67 governments at the GASB 84 boundary above.
Component units
Every county's expenditures file reports a Component Units column separately from the headline total. Florida's compiled files cannot distinguish a component unit that is legally part of the primary government from one that is legally separate, so this exclusion is applied uniformly, without that distinction, to every county.
Duval County's fiscal data is filed and reported as the City of Jacksonville consolidated government, not as a standalone county filing — every figure on this site for Duval County reflects that consolidated filing.
See ADR-0001, ADR-0002, ADR-0003, and ADR-0004 for the full decision records.
Independence
TaxpayerScope's public data is always free to access. The site carries no display advertising and no sponsored pages. TaxpayerScope is currently self-funded, with no outside financial support. Any future voluntary support, paid tooling, or API access will never gate basic taxpayer data, and financial support of any kind never influences which data is presented, how it is ranked, what methodology is used, or whether unfavorable figures are shown.
Reproduce this figure: Orange County's FY2024 real spending per resident
Starting only from the archived source file and the rules on this page, here is how Orange County's FY2024 real spending per resident is calculated, step by step.
Step 1: Which workbook
The workbook is the Florida EDR county government expenditures compiled workbook for Orange County — agency Florida EDR, file "orangecountyexpenditures.xlsx", sheet "2024".
Archived copy: Download the archived copy (284.7 KB, sha256 f532fa55e727…)
Step 2: Which fund-type columns
Governmental Funds' five reporting columns — General, Special Revenue, Debt Service, Capital Projects, Permanent — are the columns summed for this figure. Enterprise, Internal Service, Custodial, Pension, and component-unit columns are reported separately, not included here.
Step 3: Which transfer codes are excluded
Account codes 581 (Interfund transfer out), 586 (Intragovernmental transfer out), 588 (Non cash transfer out) are excluded from every governmental-fund column before summing, because each one represents money moving between a government's own funds or already counted elsewhere, not new spending.
Step 4: Nominal spending
Summing every remaining leaf account code's Governmental Funds columns for FY2024 gives nominal (unadjusted) spending of $2,979,127,753.
Step 5: Which CPI months are averaged
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, U.S. city average (CUUR0000SA0), is averaged across Florida's fiscal year — October 2023 through September 2024 — giving a fiscal-year CPI mean of 311.581 for FY2024.
Archived copy: Download the archived copy (10.5 KB, sha256 384f2b3428d4…)Archived copy: Download the archived copy (1.2 KB, sha256 ca44405466c9…)
Step 6: Inflation adjustment
FY2024 is already Orange County's dollar year, so its own CPI mean, 311.581, divided by itself gives a ratio of exactly 1.000 — nominal spending needs no adjustment, and real spending equals $2,979,127,753. For comparison, the ten-year window's start year, FY2015, had a CPI mean of 236.742 — a year whose ratio to the dollar year would be above 1.
Step 7: Which population estimate is used
Population for FY2024 is 1,533,646, from Census Bureau Population Estimates Program, Vintage 2024 county population totals (co-est2024-alldata).
Archived copy: Download the archived copy (1.7 MB, sha256 abcc8720d669…)
Step 8: Real spending per resident
Dividing real spending by population and rounding half-up to the cent gives real spending per resident of $1,942.51 for FY2024 — the same figure published above as $1,942.51.
Run it yourself
This script follows only the steps above and reads the archived files directly — it does not use TaxpayerScope's own pipeline code.
Download the reproduction script (26.1 KB, sha256 78d863499be3…)
Show full hash
78d863499be3747d123a12990403d747c1db0023f0f73a044c6cfa4547b3d19a