The monthly collections report is out today. The headline number is not too bad:

• “Major General Fund-State revenue collections for the February 11 – March 10, 2012 collection period were $7.7 million … lower than the February forecast."

However, the underlying detail is weaker than the headline:

• "Revenue Act collections for the current period came in $18.6 million … below the February forecast.”
• “February [DOR non-Revenue Act] collections were $11.0 million … above the February forecast. The largest contributor … was cigarette taxes, which came in $5.1 million (19.3%) above the forecast … mainly due to a smaller-than-expected amount of deferred payments for tax stamps. Payments made in February rather than deferred to March were $3.6 million more than forecasted. Because of this, it is likely that March payments will fall short by a similar amount. Real estate excise taxes came in $3.2 million higher than forecasted. The positive variance was almost entirely due to two large commercial real estate transactions in Seattle… ‘Other’ revenues came in $3.3 million above the forecast, due mainly to larger-than-forecasted transfers of unclaimed property into the GF-S.”

The full report is available here.