On Monday, the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council reported general fund–state revenue collections for the February 11 – March 10 period in the monthly Economic and Revenue Update. For the period, collections exceeded forecast by $41.6 million (4.6%). EFRC staff attributes most of this positive variance to timing in payments and expects “payments in the next two months will likely be less than forecasted in November.”

Cumulatively, collections for the last four months are $125.5 million (2.5%) greater than the amount that was forecasted in November. Most of this variance, however, is attributed by staff to special factors, such as the timing issue mentioned above and real estate excise tax on transactions accelerated to beat hike in federal capital gains tax rate that went into effect on January 1.

There is nothing in this report to change my expectation that the EFRC will reduce the forecast of state revenues for the 2013-15 biennium when it meets on March 20.

The Economic and Revenue Update is available here.