The 22,000% ROI: How Lobbying Became America's Best Investment

The Academic Proof

In 2009, researchers Raquel Alexander, Susan Scholz, and Stephen Mazza published a landmark study in the Journal of the American Taxation Association. They tracked 93 corporations that lobbied for the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 — a bill that created a one-time "tax holiday" allowing companies to repatriate overseas profits at a 5.25% rate instead of the standard 35%.

The numbers were staggering. Those 93 firms spent $282.7 million on lobbying between 2003 and 2004. They collectively brought home $312 billion in offshore profits and saved an estimated $62.5 billion in taxes. The implied return on their lobbying investment: 22,000%.

To put that in perspective: if you invested $1,000 in the S&P 500 in 2004, you'd have roughly $5,600 today. If you'd spent that $1,000 on lobbying for the tax holiday, you'd have gotten $220,000 back. In one year.

Forbes later expanded the analysis. In a 2011 article, they found that Fortune 100 companies had collectively turned $2 billion in lobbying spending into $400 billion in government benefits — a 200:1 return. Whether it's tax breaks, no-bid contracts, favorable regulations, or killed bills, the math always points the same direction: lobbying pays.

What Our Data Shows

OpenLobby tracks every federal lobbying disclosure filed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act since 2018. That's 650,333 filings disclosing a total of $15.2 billion in lobbying income. And the trend line only goes up.

In 2025, lobbying spending hit $2.7 billion — a 93% increase from 2018's $1.4 billion. That's not inflation. That's rational actors recognizing that the more government controls, the more it pays to influence government.

The Top Investors

The biggest lobbying spenders in our database read like a who's who of American business — and they're doubling down.

The US Chamber of Commerce leads at $591.9 million — nearly $600 million spent lobbying over just eight years. That sounds like a lot until you consider what they're protecting: their 300,000+ member companies collectively represent trillions in annual revenue. Even a marginal regulatory change — a delayed EPA rule, a tweaked tax provision — can be worth billions to those members. The Chamber's lobbying spend is a rounding error on the value it delivers.

Meta Platforms is perhaps the most telling case. Their lobbying has exploded — up 244% over our tracking period, reaching $154.9 million total. Why? Because the threats have multiplied. Antitrust lawsuits. AI regulation. Privacy bills. Section 230 reform. Content moderation mandates. When government has the power to break up your company or regulate your core product, you spend whatever it takes to be heard.

Amazon tells the same story — up 105% to $147.1 million. As the company expanded from e-commerce into cloud computing (AWS serves the Pentagon), healthcare, and logistics, its regulatory surface area grew. More government touchpoints means more lobbying.

The Growth Trajectories Tell the Story

Our trajectory analysis categorizes every client in the database by their spending trend. The results are revealing:

• 4,627 clients have "exploding" lobbying trajectories (100%+ growth)
• 4,835 clients are "growing" (25–100% growth)
• 11,106 clients are stable
• 3,779 clients are reducing spending
• 9,919 clients are declining
• 4,415 clients are brand new entrants

Nearly 10,000 organizations are increasing their lobbying investment — and 4,415 are entering the game for the first time. That's not a sign of a system that's working. It's a sign that the government has become so powerful that you can't afford not to lobby.

Why 22,000% Returns Are Rational

The academic literature keeps confirming the same basic finding: lobbying works, and it works spectacularly well.

A 2011 study by Igan, Mishra, and Tressel found that financial institutions that lobbied more aggressively were more likely to receive favorable regulatory treatment during the 2008 crisis. A 2014 study in the American Economic Review showed that firms that lobby pay lower effective tax rates. A 2016 study found that every $1 spent on tax lobbying returned $5.50 in reduced tax obligations.

These returns vary by industry and issue, but they're consistently positive. And they create a self-reinforcing cycle: the more government has to give (or take), the higher the returns to lobbying, which attracts more lobbying, which gives government more incentive to expand its power (more petitioners = more importance = bigger budgets).

The Libertarian Diagnosis

There's a popular narrative that lobbying is the problem and we just need to regulate it harder. More disclosure. Lower contribution limits. Cooling-off periods. But this misses the point entirely.

Lobbying exists because the federal government controls $6.75 trillion in annual spending, writes regulations that affect every industry, and has the power to make or break entire sectors with a single bill. As long as government has that power, people will spend money trying to influence how it's used. You can no more stop lobbying than you can stop water from flowing downhill.

The real question isn't "how do we stop lobbying?" It's "why does government control enough of the economy to make a 22,000% lobbying ROI possible?"

Consider: the 2004 tax holiday that generated that 22,000% return existed because the corporate tax rate was 35%. Companies had $312 billion trapped overseas specifically because bringing it home was punished by the tax code. The lobbying wasn't to get a special favor — it was to temporarily undo the damage of an existing policy. The 93 firms weren't seeking rent; they were paying a ransom.

Every dollar spent lobbying is a dollar not spent on R&D, hiring, or capital investment. It's a deadweight loss — pure friction in the economy created by the government's control over resources. Economists call it "rent-seeking," and it's economically indistinguishable from theft. The money doesn't create value; it merely redirects existing value from the public to the connected.

The Numbers Keep Growing

Our data shows that lobbying spending grew from $1.4 billion in 2018 to $2.7 billion in 2025 — virtually doubling. The number of filings rose from 66,516 to 95,275. And the number of new entrants — organizations lobbying for the first time — surged to 6,997 in 2025, up from 3,796 in 2019.

This isn't an industry in decline. It's an industry in a boom cycle, and every new regulation, every new government program, every expansion of federal authority creates new customers. The Inflation Reduction Act spawned an army of clean-energy lobbyists. AI regulation is doing the same for tech companies. Trade wars drive manufacturing lobbyists to K Street.

The 22,000% ROI isn't an anomaly. It's the system working exactly as designed — if you understand that the system was designed by the people who benefit from it.

What You Can Do

Transparency is the first step. That's why OpenLobby exists — to make the lobbying data accessible, searchable, and understandable. When you can see who's spending what on which issues, you can start asking the right questions.

Explore our client database to see who's spending the most. Check the trends page to watch spending trajectories in real time. And read our other investigations to understand how the revolving door, geographic concentration, and issue arms races make the lobbying machine even more powerful.

The 22,000% ROI exists because information asymmetry lets the connected profit at the expense of everyone else. The antidote is sunlight.