There are numerous funding strategies state advocates and leaders can pursue for increasing the revenue from state and local sources that can be directed to support early childhood programs. There has been significant work done at both at the state and local levels, to support quality programs through dedicated taxes. These revenues can have a significant impact on long-term goals, and there have already been several early successes in using them to help close the extreme funding gap in early childhood.
STATE REVENUE STRATEGIES
Children's Funding Project — Learn more about voter-approved children’s funds—state or local tax revenue dedicated to children’s services by voters via a ballot measure. This is a library of resources from Children's Funding Project. (2024)
Children's Funding Project — Though the terms often are used interchangeably, blending and braiding represent two different strategies for commingling different funding sources. In this fact sheet, CFP examines how states can take the multiple revenue streams at their disposal and bring them together to achieve a particular policy goal. (2023)
Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy — This report distills the findings of ITEP's “Who Pays?” brief into policy recommendations that can serve as a guide to new lawmakers, advocates, and others seeking to improve their state’s tax codes. It explains the importance of favoring taxes on income and wealth over taxes on consumption, the value of certain targeted tax benefits for families living in poverty, the need to abandon ineffective, unnecessary tax subsidies for high-income households, and the promise of bold new options for improving the regressive distributional outcomes of state and local tax policies. (2019)
Children's Funding Project — State-enabling legislation for children’s special taxing districts was first passed by the Florida legislature in 1986. Since then, several states have followed suit. (2019)
Children's Funding Project and Harvard Graduate School of Education — This policy brief shines light on ten innovative methods to finance services for children and youth. (2019)
The BUILD Initiative, Center for American Progress, Children’s Funding Project, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, and University of Maryland College Park, Schools of Public Health and Public Policy — This brief introduces state and local tax policy areas for consideration as part of the push for expanded public investment in early care and education. Seven tax policy areas are presented. Each tax is defined, and examples are included showing current use of these taxes for early care and education, policy ideas that have been tried but have not yet passed and new, next-generation ideas. (2019)
FISCAL MAPPING
Children’s Funding Project — This paper is a primer on documenting and analyzing the various sources of funding that support programs and services for children and youth in a state, city, or county. (2022)
P5 Fiscal Strategies -- P5 Fiscal Strategies compiles numerous early childhood revenue resources on its site, including a resource list of cost-modeling tools and and a clearinghouse of state cost-modeling reports.
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