April 15 A Week Away

Californians have one week to complete their tax returns, but some of the early (earlier) birds have already paid.  Between Monday and today, Tuesday, April 8, the Franchise Tax Board has collected somewhere around $300 million in personal income tax receipts according to preliminary figures.   Including the revenues from withholding for individuals and netting out refunds, the two-day take has been about $680 million.  This is about $100 million more than was collected during the comparable two-day period last year.

California Consumers Out Shopping

Although the Passover and Easter holidays are a week and two weeks away, respectively, Californians are shopping and adding to California’s tax collections.  Retail sales tax collections for April 7 and 8, which also included the weekend, totaled $26.5 million.  This dwarfed the $11.2 million received a year ago, when Easter and Passover occurred at the end of March.  Typically, retail sales tax receipts -- excluding major consumer durable goods -- account for about one-third of sales tax collections.

April Tax Receipts Reach $1.3 Billion in First Week

Final numbers are in for California’s tax take on its three major revenue sources for the first week of April though Monday, the 7th, and the numbers look positive.  The first week total was $1.3 billion, which is about 10.2% of the total expected for the month as a whole. This is identical to the proportion reached in the comparable first tax reporting week of April 2013.

Corporate taxes are at 9.8% of their monthly target. While retail sales refunds so far have exceeded tax payments, personal income tax receipts are already at 13.3% of their monthly goal. The heavy inflows of personal tax payments should come around the middle of the month.

Nearly two-thirds of every dollar deposited in the General Fund comes from the Personal Income Tax (PIT).  Individuals pay the bulk of this tax, but certain partnerships and closely held companies may also opt into the income tax system.  These partnerships and S-corporations account for less than 10 percent of the total PIT collections.

 

 

Weekend Tax Payments Tallied

This morning we received two additional data points on California’s tax receipts.  For April 7, which includes funds received during the weekend, retail sales taxes totaled about $20 million, the highest daily number so far this month and nearly double the number recorded after last week’s three-day weekend/holiday.  Estimated taxes totaled $136 million, which appears to be somewhat on the softer side.  Including these latest two figures, California’s revenues from its tops three tax sources—personal income, corporate, and sales taxes—are at $64.5 billion for the fiscal year to date.

Tax tracker records collections in the three major taxes. Are there other revenues that are deposited in the General Fund?  Levies on insurance, alcohol and horse racing are General Fund revenue sources.  Interest on unclaimed property is deposited in the General Fund.  Proceeds from levies of the VLF and property tax are not, as they are considered “local” taxes. Last week, the state completed the third quarter of the fiscal year. 

Playoffs Tonight

While the NCAA tournament may be on the minds of many, California’s revenue watch is on a full court press as the critical tax season begins.  A word of caution should be mentioned about preliminary estimates made with initial data feeds from the reporting agencies: While the preliminary numbers for the first four days of April tallied tax receipts from California’s three major revenue sources at about $1.5 billion, revised numbers put the total at $830 million.  The variance could also easily be positive on the state’s behalf, but analysts should not overreact to early estimates.

 

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).