The US Daily Cash Surplus for 4/25/2013 was $4.7B…pushing us back into surplus after yesterday’s brief return to normalcy. The category “Individual Income and Employment Taxes Not Withheld” continues to lead the charge. This category represents taxes not withheld directly from a paycheck…for example if you owed taxes and mailed a check on 4/15… Or if you were an investor with a large capital gains.. YOY through 25 days, this category is up from 131B in 4/2012 to $174B in 4/2013. This is good for about 65% of the total $69B revenue gain we’ve seen, with the balance being in Corporate Taxes, Taxes withheld, and other misc. categories. Withheld taxes are up about 8.4%…consistent with the rest of the year.
With 3 days left, the main thing I am interested in is the YOY interest payments…last year they came in at $15.3B for the month. Debt has increased about $1T in the last year, but effective interest rates have inched down a bit as well. I’m not expecting any huge changes, but this is one of the categories I keep a close eye on because if/when treasury loses control of interest rates, it’s pretty much game over because zero% is just about all we can afford to pay anyway. As of the end of March, I had the effective rate at 1.85%. A jump of just 1% would mean an additional $120B per year of deficits….a number that will grow along with our debt once we say goodbye to April.
