Land Management Agencies: Revenue Sharing Payments to States and Counties

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on revenue sharing programs that the federal land management agencies use to compensate states for the tax exempt status of federal lands within their boundaries, focusing on: (1) the major differences among these programs; (2) the processes that California, Oregon, and Washington use to distribute the federal payments to the counties and the major differences among them; and (3) the amount of federal compensation that California, Oregon, and Washington received and distributed to their counties compared with the amounts that the federal agencies calculated as attributable to the receipts generated in the counties during fiscal years 1995 through 1997.