Daily Deficit

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Tuesday 9/23/2014 was $3.8B following Monday’s $17.1B surplus, pushing the September 2014 Surplus through 23 days to $67B.

Taxes not withheld continue to flow in and have picked up the pace a bit over last year bringing the YOY to +12% good for a $7B pickup so far. Total revenues sit at +11%, a $31B gain and counting. We have 5 business days remaining with the most interesting date being next Tuesday 9/30 where we should get a sizable GSE Dividend from Fannie/Freddie. The size should be interesting….last September, it was almost $15B combined. Last quarter, it was only about $10B. I don’t have a good handle of Fannie and Freddie’s seasonal variation, but another YOY miss would raise some eyebrows on what was starting to look like a reliable $50B+ annual source of cash for Uncle Sam….

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Friday 9/19/2014 was $5.4B pushing the surplus back up to $46B through 19 days.

No big moves for the day…revenues were up $0.5B and outlays were down a hair. Taxes not withheld are still flowing in and will through midweek before falling off to their normal trickle. They currently stand at about +5% and have been trending down, but there is still time for a surprise or two.

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Thursday 9/18/2014 was $2.7B bringing the September surplus through 18 days to $41B.

Taxes not withheld took a $1B step back which is curious, but they still hold a $2.7B 7.3% lead over September 2013, so it’s probably just an anomaly. There is still plenty of time left for it to go either way, but it’s not looking like it will match the +30% we are still seeing in corporate taxes.

In other news….I haven’t discussed Medicaid in a while. After running hot all year, including a 36% YOY increase in July, August took a breather posting only a 2% gain. 18 days into September 2014 it’s looking like it will be another bad month with a 25-30% gain if current trends hold. That pencils out to about $5B increase per month…$60B annualized….outpacing even social security, a program more than twice its size.

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Wednesday 9/17/2014 was $4.3B following 9/16’s $16.9B surplus, bringing the September 2014 surplus through 17 days to $43B.

As discussed in the last post, taxes not withheld have begun to flow in at elevated levels thanks to it being a quarter end month and the related tax deadlines. Currently taxes not withheld from paychecks are running at +12% YOY…a good showing, but not in line with corporate taxes which are still at +30%. Overall revenues are up 12%…if we stay at this level, it will be the first month at +10% since March. In other…perhaps related news….Stocks ended the day at record highs.

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Monday 9/15/2014 was $70.6B pushing September to surplus as expected….a total of $32B.

This turned out to be a phenomenal day for corporate taxes with $59B worth flowing in vs just $42B last year good for a $17B and 30% YOY gain. this is definitely going to blow up my revenue forecast, but it’s good news(for the deficit…not so much corporations) so i’ll take it. I suppose the bottom line is…corporations are making more money and paying more taxes.

Looking at the Year To Date (YTD)….calendar…not fiscal….cash corporate tax payments are up 15%…and corporate tax refunds are down 10%. Taxes withheld from paychecks are up 5%….taxes not withheld are up 4%. Total revenues are up 4.6%…..with the reduced Fannie/Freddie payments dragging down the total no doubt.

Bottom line….it was a pretty good day. With corporate taxes mostly behind us, we can focus on taxes not withheld which should be picking up to the $5-10B per day rate as early as tomorrow.