On September 15 the state’s Economic and Revenue Forecast Council (ERFC) issued its monthly report on general fund revenue collections.

This report covers payments received between August 11 and September 10 for the sales tax, the use tax, the business and occupation tax, the public utility tax, the tobacco products tax, and penalties and interest (collectively the Revenue Act receipts), and it covers payments received between August 1 and August 31 for liquor taxes, cigarette tax, property tax, real estate excise tax, unclaimed property and other sources.

This report includes payments from monthly filers relating to economic activity in the month of July.
The total amount received this month was $2,099.1 million, $5.1 million (0.2%) less than the amount expected under the forecast that ERFC adopted at its June 22nd meeting. Cumulatively, for the three months since that meeting collections have exceeded the amount forecast by $177.2 million.
For the most recent month, Revenue Act taxes (primarily the sales, use, utility, and business and occupation taxes) fell $10.5 million (0.5%) short of forecast. Retail sales tax collections were up 0.6% year over year, while B&O tax collections were up 1.2%.

Here is a chart showing seasonally adjusted Revenue Act receipts since 2004:

For the month, Non-Revenue Act taxes exceeded forecast by $4.8 million. Within this grouping, real estate excise tax (REET) collections were $19.1 million (7.3%) greater than expected. The value of transactions subject to REET has fallen by 50% since the second half of 2021, as this chart shows:
Payments of court fees, fines and forfeitures into the general fund totaled $518 thousand (15.5%) more than forecasted.

The chart below compares year-over-year growth rates of general fund-state revenues to year-over-year inflation in the consumer price index:

Inflation has trended downward since mid-summer 2022, which is a positive sign. For 11 of the past 13 months, however, the year-over-year growth in revenue fell short of the year-over-year growth in consumer prices.

The September collections report is available here.

The ERFC will meet at 10 AM on Tuesday, September 26 to update its economic and revenue forecasts for the state. Information on this meeting is available here. I expect we will see modest increases in the revenue forecasts to reflect the positive collections experience over the last three months as well as a slightly improved outlook for the state economy: For each of the years from 2023 to 2027, the updated economic forecast for the state (which is available here) shows somewhat higher nominal personal income and nonfarm payroll employment than was projected in the economic forecast upon which the June revenue forecast was based.