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TaxDollarData

Updated April 2026 · FY2024 dataset

Methodology

TaxDollarData makes federal contract spending searchable. Every figure on this site is computed from the official USAspending.gov award dataset, reconciled to SAM.gov contractor registrations and grouped by Federal Procurement Data System Product and Service Codes. The current dataset covers 2,005 contractors and $529.6B in FY2024 obligations.

Data Sources

Our primary source is the USAspending.gov API at api.usaspending.gov, the official public database of federal spending mandated by the DATA Act of 2014. USAspending aggregates federal contract, grant, direct payment, loan, and other financial assistance awards reported by agencies through the Federal Procurement Data System and other federal feeds. It is the same data Congress and the GAO use for federal spending oversight.

We supplement USAspending with SAM.gov contractor registration records (for vendor identity, location, and corporate hierarchy) and the Federal Procurement Data System (for procurement-specific fields not surfaced through USAspending). For DOGE-related actions, we cross-reference agency announcements at doge.gov and verified news reports against USAspending contract records to keep the figures auditable.

Contractor Profiles

Contractor profiles aggregate every USAspending.gov award attributed to a single Unique Entity ID (UEI), the standard federal vendor identifier. For each contractor we publish total federal obligations, contract vs grant counts, the agencies the contractor works with most, the top categories of work performed (rolled up from PSCs), recent individual awards, and a yearly spending trend.

Where the federal record links subsidiaries to a parent UEI, we roll the children into the parent. Where it does not, we preserve the federal record as filed — even if that means a parent appears once and a subsidiary appears separately. This conservative approach prefers federal-record fidelity over speculative consolidation.

Industry Categorization

Industry rollups follow the Product and Service Code (PSC) hierarchy maintained by the FPDS. Each PSC tags an award with what the government bought (a building, a software license, a research study, a piece of equipment). For visualization we collapse PSCs into top-level categories — Defense & Aerospace, Information Technology, Healthcare, Construction, Professional Services, Research & Development, etc. — but the underlying PSC is preserved for advanced analysis on contractor and agency profiles.

Update Cadence

USAspending.gov updates daily from federal agency feeds. We pull a fresh extract on a regular cadence and recompute every derived statistic — rankings, rollups, top-N lists, state totals, industry shares — against the current dataset. That means historical claims on this site update if an agency restates a prior-year obligation. The current refresh covers FY2024, last updated April 2026.

Known Limitations

  • Classified contracts. Defense and intelligence agencies do not fully disclose classified contracts to USAspending. Topline amounts may appear, but with limited descriptive detail.
  • Subcontractor flows. Subcontractor spending is only partially tracked. A prime contractor's reported obligations may include funds that flow to subcontractors not visible at the top level.
  • Obligations ≠ outlays. Obligations are commitments, not actual cash payments. Agencies can de-obligate funds in later fiscal years, which adjusts historical totals.
  • Name normalization. Where the federal record uses inconsistent vendor names without a unifying UEI, our reconciliation is imperfect. Large diversified firms can appear under multiple entries.
  • Award descriptions. Free-text "award description" fields are agency-supplied and vary in quality. Where we summarize, we preserve the federal description verbatim and add narrative context separately.

Editorial Standards

We do not estimate, model, or extrapolate beyond the federal record. If a claim is not supported by USAspending.gov, SAM.gov, FPDS, or an agency-published statement, we do not make it. We do not predict contractor risk, future awards, or stock movements; many large contractors are publicly traded, but federal contract data alone is insufficient grounds for investment decisions and we do not present it that way. We do not rank one contractor as "better" than another; ranking pages sort by federal obligations and are descriptive, not evaluative.

Citation

If you use data from TaxDollarData, please cite:

TaxDollarData. "[Page Title] Federal Spending Data." taxdollardata.org, FY2024. Accessed [date]. Underlying data: USAspending.gov.

Underlying data is sourced from USAspending.gov and is in the public domain.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is USAspending.gov?

USAspending.gov is the official public database of federal spending, mandated by the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act) of 2014. It tracks every federal contract, grant, direct payment, loan, and other financial assistance award — populated from agency records via the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) and other federal feeds. It is the same dataset used by Congress, the GAO, and federal inspectors general.

Why is contractor name normalization imperfect?

A single corporate parent can file federal awards under multiple legal names — divisions, subsidiaries, holding-company variants. We reconcile to the SAM.gov Unique Entity ID (UEI) wherever the federal record provides one, but historical filings sometimes lack a UEI or carry a different parent designation. Where reconciliation is ambiguous, we err on the side of preserving the federal record as filed rather than fabricating a parent rollup.

How accurate are the obligation numbers?

Headline obligation totals match what agencies have reported to USAspending.gov as of the last refresh. The federal data itself is the upper bound on accuracy: where USAspending shows an obligation, that obligation exists in the federal record. Two structural caveats apply: (1) classified contracts in defense and intelligence appear with reduced detail, and (2) subcontractor flows are only partially captured, so a prime contractor's reported obligations may include funds that ultimately flow to subcontractors who do not appear at the top level.

How often does the data refresh?

USAspending.gov publishes daily updates from federal agencies. We pull the latest dataset on a regular refresh cadence (last refreshed April 2026, covering FY2024). All derived statistics — top-N rankings, agency rollups, industry shares, state totals — are recomputed at each refresh against the current data, so historical claims update if agencies restate prior-year obligations.

How are industry categories assigned?

Industry rollups follow the Product and Service Code (PSC) hierarchy maintained by the Federal Procurement Data System. PSCs starting with letters (A, B, R, S) are services; numeric PSCs are products. We map each award's PSC to a top-level category for visualization but preserve the underlying PSC for users who want to drill down. Defense awards also carry NAICS codes and DOD-specific budget activity codes; for cross-agency comparisons we standardize on PSC.

Where can I download the underlying data myself?

USAspending.gov's download center provides bulk CSV and JSON exports of every award. api.usaspending.gov offers a REST API. Contractor registration data is available via SAM.gov. Procurement-specific feeds are at fpds.gov. All four are public domain; we cite them rather than republishing bulk extracts.

Source: U.S. federal government, USAspending.gov, SAM.gov, and the Federal Procurement Data System. Data is public domain.

Methodology last updated 2026-04-09.