Seal of Maine Maine

Maine has a statutory tax and expenditure limit passed by legislative referendum in 2005, Title 5 Section 1534 as enacted by Public Laws 2005, and amended in 2015; Public Laws 2015 Chapter 267, Part L, Section 7. The growth limitation factor is the average personal income growth (as amended in 2015), but allows for several exemptions including catastrophic events, unfunded or underfunded state or federal mandates, citizens initiatives and other referenda, court orders or decrees, or loss of federal funding. Because this is a statutory TEL, it can be overridden by a simple majority vote.

 
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 4,742,487,798
    1993 4,429,777,502
    1994 4,494,348,226
    1995 4,714,758,644
    1996 4,601,623,061
    1997 4,505,769,587
    1998 4,651,865,529
    1999 5,032,139,258
    2000 5,269,074,103
    2001 5,829,086,906
    2002 6,131,349,601
    2003 6,060,318,042
    2004 6,109,770,021
    2005 6,355,486,164
    2006 6,512,623,895
    2007 6,706,096,639
    2008 6,825,678,293
    2009 6,934,805,520
    2010 6,666,628,205
    2011 6,594,666,348
    2012 6,698,578,102
    2013 6,198,507,061
    2014 6,441,285,017
    2015 6,330,517,915
    2016 6,497,290,808
    2017 6,551,284,258
    2018 6,497,661,513
    2019 6,745,287,323
    2020 7,054,498,859
    2021 6,903,917,273
    2022 7,434,000,000
*All spending figures are in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars.