Louisiana

Louisiana has a constitutional tax and expenditure limit enacted by legislative referendum in 1985 and amended several times throughout the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. The TEL is covered in Article 7 Sections 2 and 10 of the Louisiana State Constitution. The TEL limits taxes and expenditures to personal income growth and can be overridden by a supermajority vote. This TEL also allows numerous exemptions including debt service, allocations, retirement contributions, education spending, grants, “any monies not required to be deposited in the state treasury as provided in Article VII Section 9,” and payments towards deficits at the end of the fiscal year.

The base year represents the year the hypothetical Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR) would have been enacted. Selecting a base year changes how the state’s TABOR is calculated because the annual growth rates of inflation and population change depending on when TABOR is enacted.

Year	Inflation-adjusted Actual Spending
1992	14,297,720,000
1993	14,664,750,000
1994	16,323,650,000
1995	18,030,200,000
1996	15,740,500,000
1997	16,801,320,000
1998	16,635,850,000
1999	17,108,740,000
2000	15,865,500,000
2001	17,295,160,000
2002	17,297,860,000
2003	18,174,620,000
2004	11,019,180,000
2005	16,985,430,000
2006	18,982,400,000
2007	18,521,250,000
2008	19,206,020,000
2009	20,627,510,000
2010	23,591,750,000
2011	23,266,110,000
2012	18,613,810,000
2013	20,604,930,000
2014	19,923,260,000
2015	20,700,840,000
2016	19,958,570,000
2017	18,298,460,000
2018	19,742,350,000
2019	19,795,460,000
2020	21,383,990,000

*All spending figures are in inflation-adjusted 2020 dollars.