The economic and revenue forecast council’s monthly Economic & Revenue Update brought a bit of good news today. Here are the key bullet points regarding revenue from the summary:

• Major General Fund-State revenue collections for the July 11 – August 10, 2013 collection period were $72.6 million (6.2%) higher than the June forecast.
• The June forecast had expected a refund of $22.5 million to occur during this collection period but it will instead occur at a later date, lowering future collections. If the refund had occurred collections would have been $50.1 million (4.3%) higher than forecasted.
• There were several large sales of commercial property in July that helped to generate a $34 million positive variance in real estate excise taxes.
• Cumulatively, revenue collections are now $80.0 million (3.2%) above the forecast, but if the $22.5 million refund would have occurred as expected collections would have been $57.6 million (2.3%) above the forecast.

Factoring out the delayed refund, collections have exceeded forecast by $28.8 million per month, on average, since the forecast was revised in June.

The Update can be downloaded here.