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 clearly 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 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 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.  We are also expanding our efforts to provide truthful and transparent financial information about the federal government's financial condition.

… 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.