3/15/2013 Daily US Cash Deficit

The US Daily Cash Surplus for 3/15/2013 was $17.7B, driven, as expected by $21.5B in corporate tax revenues. It wasn’t exactly a blowout, but for the month Corporate Tax deposits are running $2B over last year. If we compare fiscal year to fiscal year through 5.5 months, there is an 11% improvement…but, this is only $12B, so the magnitude isn’t really enough to move the needle much, and the rate of growth seems to be slowing….more on that another day.

Looking at the charts, we can see that net revenues are still down and outlays are flat, for a $14B higher deficit than last year through 15 days. With corporate taxes behind us, absent some big surprises, it is looking more likely that the March 2013 deficit will come in under last year’s $139B due to month end timing of outlays. 3/30/2012 had about $45B in outlays ($10B is a typical uneventful day). ~$15B I am certain will not go out until 4/1 this year…Another $16B is Medicare outlays…I don’t know where that one will end up, so that’s $16B of uncertainty right from the beginning…I’ll just say that anywhere between $115B and $139B is looking likely, though timing of some large outlays could easily swing it either way.