A dollar back for every dollar sent.

The most common argument against New Hampshire independence is that the state would lose federal money. It is worth finding out how much federal money there is to lose. The Rockefeller Institute of Government works this out for every state each year, and the answer for New Hampshire is not the one either side expects.

Federal fiscal year 2023, the most recent full year published.

The figure

In federal fiscal year 2023 the federal government collected $21.98 billion from New Hampshire and spent $22.01 billion in it. Per person that is $15,676 collected against $15,699 spent.

One dollar back for every dollar sent. The net balance is positive by $23 a head, which on a state budget is indistinguishable from zero. New Hampshire ranks 47th of fifty.

What the neighbors get

The figure only means something beside the others. This is federal spending received per dollar of federal taxes paid, same year, same method.

  • Virginia, $2.22. First in the country.
  • Maine, $1.88. Tenth.
  • Vermont, $1.48. Seventeenth.
  • Connecticut, $1.16. Thirty-fourth.
  • New Hampshire, $1.00. Forty-seventh.
  • Massachusetts, $0.95. Forty-ninth.
  • New Jersey, $0.88. Fiftieth.

Across the country the average American received $4,099 more from the federal government than they paid into it, because the federal government spends more than it collects and borrows the difference. New Hampshire's share of that arrangement is twenty-three dollars.

What this does not prove

It does not prove New Hampshire is being robbed. Twenty-three dollars a head to the good is not robbery, and we will not claim it is. Vermont and Maine do far better out of the arrangement, and nobody is robbing them either.

What separating would cost, and what it would be worth, are not on this ledger and cannot be read off it.

The ranking moves, and the method is arguable. New Hampshire stood 43rd in 2022 and 49th in 2021. The Rockefeller Institute publishes its assumptions, and reasonable people disagree about how to assign federal spending to a state.

What it does prove

It disposes of one specific claim: that New Hampshire is carried. On the federal ledger New Hampshire pays its own way, to the dollar, and has no net subsidy to lose.

That matters because the fiscal argument is usually deployed as a conversation ender. The state is small, the reasoning goes, and small states live on federal money, so the question does not need to be asked. New Hampshire is small and does not live on federal money. Whatever the case against independence is, it is not that one.

The rest of it, what the money currently buys and what would have to replace it, is a real question and it has its own page.

What changes and what does not Add your name

Sources

  • All figures: Rockefeller Institute of Government, Giving or Getting? New York's Balance of Payments with the Federal Government, August 2025, Table 5 and Table 6, federal fiscal year 2023. Report page. New Hampshire's row: receipts $21,981 million, expenditures $22,013 million, $1.00 expenditures per dollar of receipts, balance of payments $32 million, rank 47 in 2023, 43 in 2022, 49 in 2021. Per capita: $15,676, $15,699, $23.
  • The United States average per capita balance of payments of $4,099 is from the same report.

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