Budget Deficit

The US Daily Cash Surplus for 9/23/2013 was $13.7B as revenues from “Taxes not Withheld” defied the historical trend for the second day in a row, posting $9.1B of cash revenue compared to the comparable year ago (9/24/2012) cash revenue of $5.7B. Last year, these revenues dried up before the end of the week, ending at only $300M on 9/28/2012. If we don’t see a similar crash over the next few days, it wouldn’t take much to handily beat the year ago revenue $ from this source.

So on that strength, revenues show strong YOY gains for the second day in a row, and are now at $+7B….a 3% YOY increase with additional gains looking likely. The Monthly Surplus is now sitting at $52B with 5 business days remaining in the month. There is still plenty of upside left with the likelihood of topping $70B growing by the day(for now).

The US Daily Cash Deficit for 9/19/2013 was $1.7B bringing the September 2013 Surplus through 19 days to $34B with seven business days remaining. We are still seeing strong cash inflows from “taxes not withheld” at $5.7B, but they do appear to be tapering down, which is what we would normally expect….ending under $1B per day by late next week. As it stands today, YOY, corporate taxes are up 1%, excise taxes are up 5%, taxes not withheld are up 7%, and taxes withheld from paychecks are up 12% :(.

All together, revenues made up another $1B of ground yesterday but are still $2B under  September 2012 thanks to the decrease in TARP repayments. Another day…no surprises.

The US Daily Cash Deficit for 9/18/2013 was $1.5B bringing the September Surplus through 18 days to $36B with 8 business days to go.

Taxes “not withheld” continue to come in strongly as expected making up the ground lost yesterday and then some…perhaps a sign that  another strong finish is on deck?? Revenues are still down $3B vs last year, but if you take out the $20B Tarp revenue from last September and it doesn’t look half bad at +8%.

Using 2012 as a guide, the last 12 calendar days of last September posted an $8B deficit, suggesting that we would end this September at a $28B surplus. However, I have to think we’ll do better than that even if we don’t see an end of month revenue surge. Between moderately higher revenues, an extra day, and some generous contributions from Fannie/Freddie, we are probably on track for a $50-$70B surplus without any surprises.

The US Daily Cash Surplus for 9/17/2013 was $3.0B as $9.4B of taxes “not withheld” were deposited in federal accounts Tuesday resulting in a rare Tuesday surplus. Still…revenues edged down about $1B from year ago…could be small timing issues, but we won’t know for a few more days.  Remember this is the category that surged 40% YOY back in April and 16% in our last quarter end (June).  With 9 full business days remaining, they are currently down 1%. It’s not time to panic…yet…we should continue to see strong inflows from this source for the rest of the month, but obviously this isn’t where we want to be with more than half of the month already in the books.

On outlays, I have a correction to make. Treasury issued a revised DTS for 9/3, with the net effect being a $14B decrease in outlays. It was issued a few weeks ago around the time I was on vacation, but I just glanced at it today and corrected my database…The revised numbers actually make a lot more sense. All month long, I’ve been seeing a ~+$40B of outlays, while timing was only explaining about $30B. So with the revision, we are at +28B, which indicates a small marginal reduction after adjusting for timing, consistent with what we would expect with sequestration ongoing. Yesterday I made some comments indicating that reaching the $70B surplus I had originally forecast was going to be a challenge…I’ll need to re-evaluate that in light of this $14B pickup, but I will probably wait for a few more days of data.