We introduce a notion of a Hodge-proper stack and extend the method of Deligne-Illusie to prove the Hodge-to-de Rham degeneration in this setting. In order to reduce the statement in characteristic $0$ to characteristic $p$, we need to find a good integral model of a stack (a so-called spreading), which, unlike in the case of schemes, need not to exist in general. To address this problem we investigate the property of spreadability in more detail by generalizing standard spreading out results for schemes to higher Artin stacks and showing that all proper and some global quotient stacks are Hodge-properly spreadable. As a corollary we deduce a (non-canonical) Hodge decomposition of the equivariant cohomology for certain classes of varieties with an algebraic group action.
Comment: Major update. Section 3 has been added and is devoted to examples (mainly quotient stacks in various setups and also Theta-stratified stacks), in particular covering Teleman's result on KN-complete quotient stacks. Section 2 has also been expanded and now contains a more detailed discussion of cohomologically proper stacks. 48 pages. Accepted to IMRN