The April Tax Bulge

April 2014 is delivering for the State of California with a strong performance of personal income taxes (PIT). Although refunds have been running about $1.0 billion above expectations, the strength in withholding, estimates, and final tax payments has pushed the net month-to-date total also about $1.0 billion above projections.

April is always the most important month for California's tax coffers. In terms of its three primary revenue sources -- PIT, corporate, and sales taxes -- April typically accounts for about 11.5% of total taxes collected for the fiscal year. If tax payments were distributed equally across the year, the monthly tax take would be only 8.3%.

Last year's tax rate increases from Proposition 30 caused April to account for 15% of total revenues collected for the year. Since tax rates have remained unchanged, that impact will be absent this year. The gains in jobs, incomes, and capital gains from stocks and real estate are still likely to mean that this April will account for nearly 14% of revenues for the total year.

Also of note: Since beginning our daily installments of Tax Tracker this year, we have reported on the income-tax payments processed by FTB in March and April. Not all the processed payments, as reported, are associated with the 2013 tax year. Some of them are payments for 2014. Some of the total may include settlements of prior-year liabilities. And, if this year is like previous years, some of the 2013 tax payments will be processed after this month. For example, FTB processed a little over 83 percent of all the 2011 resident returns by April 28, 2012.  FTB processed the rest between the end of April and December 31, 2012.