Ultimately, all subsidy analysis depends on data, and most of these data are collected and provided (not necessarily published) by governments. The usual primary source for expenditure data is government financial statements. Some government departments also helpfully prepare summary tables on expenditure under programmes for which they are responsible.
Another source of information is national accounts. While the data in national accounts capture only a subset of budgetary subsidies (no tax expenditures), the background reports for them can be enlightening. Canada, for example, as part of its annual national accounts exercise, publishes the names of companies or individuals receiving C$ 100,000 or more under a particular programme in a given year.
But many forms of subsidies, particularly tax breaks and credit sub-sidies, do not make it into the official accounts. According to the experts at the World Bank, only about a dozen countries regularly report estimates of tax expenditures. The U.S. Government publishes two sets of estimates of the tax expenditure of federal tax breaks, but only for tax expenditures worth US$ 50 million or more a year.
Information on subsidies at more local levels of government, which can be crucial in influencing investments in plants and buildings, is much harder to find, in part because the packages of incentives are unique to each recipient. In the United States, a few States (e.g., Illinois, North Carolina and Minnesota) now make some information on corporate subsidies available on the Web. The European Commission requires that its Member States notify new "state aid" programmes. This information also can now be accessed via the Internet.
Non-governmental organizations and journalists have been successful in some countries in extracting subsidy data from governments that previously had not been made public. So-called "Freedom of Information" laws have been critical in this regard.
