About

About

Mission Statement:
To educate and empower citizens with understandable, reliable, and transparent government financial information.

Founded in 2002, Truth in Accounting believes truthful accounting is the key for citizens, legislators, and the press to understand the truth about government finances. To be knowledgeable participants in their governments' financial decisions, citizens need accurate and complete financial information. Our work has focused on encouraging public entities to produce financial reports that are comprehensive, clear, and transparent; and informing the public of the importance of truthful accounting.

We offer a comprehensive analysis of government fiscal data…
We analyze government accounting data from each of the 50 states and 75 most populous cities in the country and the federal government to produce annual assessments of government finances. We use our proprietary methodology to cut through politicization and accounting tricks to show the true fiscal condition of each state and city, including the health of pension plans.  

… And we want you to explore the fiscal data on your own, too.
We also provide financial, demographic, and other data for you to examine yourself through Data-Z (formerly State Data Lab). This resource enables citizens, the press, legislators, think tanks and financial analysts to understand their governments’ financial condition and correlate that with data about the larger economic picture.