California State Controller John Chiang offers this daily tax tracker to follow personal income taxes, sales and use taxes and corporate taxes -- the three major sources of revenue for the State.

The site will be updated regularly throughout each business day. Preliminary posts use dollar figures from tax administration agencies, while the following day the Controller will post reconciled (actual cash) figures. The latest figures are always available via direct download. Preliminary sales tax figures, along with personal income tax withholdings will be available by 10:30 a.m., followed by total personal income and corporate tax receipts, along with final sales tax numbers between 1:30 and 4:00 p.m. the same business day.

The chart on the right of this screen tracks the cumulative total of income, sales and corporate tax and compares it against estimated benchmarks for the month.

Friday, April 4, 2014

April Tax Receipts Hit $1 Billion

Preliminary numbers for April 4 indicate a solid number for personal income taxes, supported by a robust number for withholdings.  Employers reported $412 million in withholding taxes for the day, bringing the month-to-date total to $1.0 billion.  Estimated tax and final tax payments were essentially equal to refunds, so that total net personal income tax payments also came in at about $1.0 billion for April 1-4. 

The interest in the income tax returns was not always so great.  Thirty years ago, when the state relied more heavily on sales tax revenue, budget watchers were more concerned about holiday sales receipts reported in December and January.  Now, as expected, corporate tax and retail sales made little additional contribution to the revenue aggregate of California’s “big three” tax sources, leaving the total at about one billion dollars for the first few days of the month. This is a good first milestone for April.


Taxpayers have about two weeks to complete their tax returns. So much of the state’s General Fund depends on collections of the income tax. No wonder April tax returns are of interest.

With just three days of final numbers, refunds are exceeding payments, but this should soon change. Preliminary numbers show a strong number for withholding for April 4 ($412m).

Updated figures posted for yesterday, April 3 ($184m for PIT, 18.6m corp and 16.7m sales).