This morning the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council issued its monthly Economic and Revenue Update. Here are the key bullets on revenue from the summary:

• Major General Fund-State revenue collections for the November 11 – December 10, 2014 collection period were $1.5 million (0.1%) lower than the November forecast.
• Revenue Act collections were $14.9 million (1.4%) lower than forecasted and non-Revenue Act collections were $13.4 million (1.6%) higher than forecasted.

Here is a chart snipped from the Update showing monthly seasonally-adjusted Revenue Act collections since 2004.

There is a noticeable drop in these seasonally adjusted receipts this month. The Update had this to say about that:

Seasonally adjusted collections decreased from last month (see figure). While the decrease was slightly more than forecasted, collections were expected to decrease after the elevated collections of the last four months. Growth is expected to resume over the next several months at a pace similar to that of the months prior to the recent surge in collections.

The collections reported today generally reflect economic activity for the month of October. This morning the Census Bureau issued its first estimate of national retail sales for the month of November. (See Calculated Risk.) Estimated growth in sales from October to November was a very strong 0.7% (and an even stronger 0.9% when sales of gasoline are excluded). This bodes well for next month’s revenue collections report.