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.
Although corporate taxes are the smallest of California’s
three major revenue engines, they are likely to exceed $8.0 billion for fiscal
year 2013-2014 and are surpassing projections made as part of the Governor’s
Budget submitted in January. Numbers for
the year to date have been running about $0.7 billion or 13% above those
forecasts.
The pickup in corporate taxes reflects the economic
recovery that has boosted company earnings nationally and in the state. The period of large write-offs from losses
incurred during the recession has also ended.
It is good news to see that corporate taxes are no longer
stalling.
With great performances from personal income and corporate taxes this month, retail sales have been very close but just behind projections for the whole month of April.
Over the last five years, retail sales revenues, on average, have experienced a moderate but significant surge in the final days of collection for the month of April.
With the estimated $58.6 million received today, the margin between revenues and the estimate is getting smaller.
With the personal income tax withholding
estimates in, the State is expected to exceed the month-end year-to-date estimates
for all three revenue totals today. The estimated year-to-date figure
currently stands at $75.1 billion, while the month-end total expectations are
$74.9 billion.
The daily
income tax collections are likely to taper off until the end of the
month. Last year, these final four days generated additional PIT
revenue of about half a billion dollars. If this year generates as
much, budget watchers can expect that cumulative income tax revenues will
total about $53.2 billion by April 30. That is an increase, but a small change --
well within estimating error -- of the January estimates. Is the change enough
to warrant an upward adjustment of current- and budget-year revenue
estimates?
