Tribal Government Budgetary Impact Up until now, the direct impact of all of the economic upheaval on the operating budgets of tribal governments has been mostly implied from the effects on various tribal economic sectors. However, we have taken the opportunity for this final update to use year-end data and more in-depth analysis to generate estimates of the actual loss of government revenue to Indian tribes. The analysis is complicated by the fact that there are no published sources detailing the exact operating budgets of individual tribes or the combined spending by tribal governments on a cumulative basis. However, inferences can be drawn from changes in federal government spending and from the likely bottom-line impacts of revenue losses by sector discussed in this report. Tribal governments do not have access to the tax revenue sources from which state governments derive their funding, such as personal or corporate income taxes and property taxes. Traditionally, the federal government has been a major source of funding for tribes due to treaty obligations and the trust limitations imposed on Indian country. Federal support, though substantial, has never been sufficient in scale or reliability to meet all of the needs of Native Americans. Tribes have made various efforts throughout their history to boost their government revenue base through tourism, mining, extraction, agriculture and other tribally-owned and operated ventures, the very sectors discussed in this white paper update. For the past 35 years or so, gaming has provided a new and extraordinarily successful addition to that mix of businesses that has provided many tribes with new sources of government program support and new access to development capital for other economic initiatives. The one tax source that tribes do have available that is common amongst non-tribal governments is some form of sales and use tax. Development of this revenue source was historically constrained by the limited amount of sales and uses and the fact that the tax was applied to ventures owned primarily by the tribes, not by private operators. In more recent years, as tribes have diversified their economies using gaming profits and other capital access, the ability to generate meaningful revenue from sales and use taxes in various forms has become an important addition to the funding of many tribal governments. The economic crisis spawned by the pandemic has hit tribes twice over, by reducing the profits of their business ventures and by reducing any sales and use tax revenue they generate. Federal support has helped mitigate that decline to a degree, with $8.0 billion set aside in the original CARES act for tribal governments. However, the CARES act included significant restrictions on the uses of that funding that have reduced its benefits to Indian country. Amongst other restrictions published in the Federal Register, the CARES act required that funds for tribal governments be used only for:
∴ OTHER INDUSTRY SECTORS
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