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Question: I have read that some states pay a lot more in taxes to Washington than they receive in benefits. For other states the opposite is true. Is there a Web site that shows this?

Answer: Those ratios are calculated regularly by the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan educational organization founded in 1937. Economist Curtis S. Dubay used fiscal year 2004 data for his special report released in March.

The report shows how much each state got back for each dollar sent to Washington. The top 10 donor states in 2004 were New Jersey (55 cents), Connecticut (66 cents), New Hampshire (67 cents), Minnesota (69 cents), Illinois (73 cents), Nevada (73 cents), Massachusetts (77 cents), California (79 cents), New York (79 cents) and Colorado (79 cents).

The top 10 beneficiaries of federal funding were New Mexico ($2), Alaska ($1.87), West Virginia ($1.66), Mississippi ($1.77), North Dakota ($1.73), Alabama ($1.71), Virginia ($1.66), Hawaii ($1.60), Montana ($1.58) and South Dakota ($1.49).

Arizona received $1.30 for each tax dollar sent to Washington.

Dubay noted that most of the high-paying states "are the so-called blue states that have generally elected politicians who support a more steeply progressive tax system even though their own constituents bear a greater share of the burden."

The report can be found at www.taxfoundation.org/ files/sr139.pdf