Interactive
How Much Revenue Could States Raise From a Sales Tax on Advertising in 2027?
How much revenue could be raised in each state?
The rapid emergence of targeted advertising, tied to the collection and use of personal data, and largely deployed via social media, has led states to explore various new taxation strategies. The estimates below model three approaches:
- Tax all advertising revenue. The broadest approach, applying the sales tax to advertising across all media — newspapers, broadcast, outdoor, and digital alike.
- Tax advertising but exempt some traditional media. A narrower approach that carves out newspapers and traditional broadcast, focusing the tax on the digital and programmatic advertising that has come to dominate the market.
- Tax only targeted advertising on large platforms. The narrowest approach, applying only to programmatic and search advertising — and in some versions, only to the largest companies in that space.
State ad tax revenue estimator
What each state could raise from a sales tax on advertising, under four policy designs.
*Hawai'i, Maryland, New Mexico, Utah, and Washington are omitted because they already have taxes on some or all advertising revenue. See Appendix in report for detailed notes and methodology.
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