Like others have stated all states have different rules. I am in NY, adopting in TX. My agency's home study in addition to making sure that your home is suitable (clean, enough bedrooms, ok neigborhood stuff like that) was mostly an interview. How we felt about adoption, your relationships with family, values and feelings & practices regarding discipline, how your family feels about adoption....things like that. The social worker spent 1 1/2 hours talking and joking with us and 5 minutes looking at our house, just enoigh time to tell us we needed smoke detectors and window guards
! OOPS. We had forgotten about those.
The homestudy was a piece of cake. If you go with a private agency they do have to request a copy of the previous years tax returns.
Hope my little bit of input helps.
Alison