The US Daily Deficit for 1/24/2013 was $2.4B bringing the January total through 24 days to $29B. There are five more business days left, and nothing out of the ordinary left on the calendar, so I am comfortable with somewhere around a $25B deficit for the month. Still no word on the Debt Limit hike making it through the senate and getting signed by the President, but I did read an article that said no opposition was expected. In any case, Treasury still has $70B cash in hand, so they should have enough to make it past 2/1 fairly comfortably even if the “No Budget No Pay” isn’t signed next week.
The US Daily Surplus for 1/23/2013 was $2.5B on very strong income tax receipts “not withheld” This is generally taxes paid on investment income and submitted quarterly, or as incurred, unlike taxes withheld from a workers paycheck and remitted every other week by the employer. With 8 days to go, 2013 is already $5B over where 2012 ended in this category. This could be strong evidence of high income individuals pulling income into 2012 to take advantage of the low tax rates before they increased in 2013…or, it could be evidence of a strong recovery…but we’ll just have to wait and see.
The US Daily Surplus for 1/22/2013 was $10B, pulling down the January Deficit through 22 days to $30B. The year on year numbers are still pretty close to 2012, keeping in mind that 2013 is currently 2 business days ahead of 2012. The remainer of the month should be pretty straight forward…I can’t remember what I predicted last time, but $25B looks like a reasonable estimate assuming marginal cost and revenue improvement over 2012 coupled with a slight delay in tax refunds.
The US Daily Deficit for 1/18/2013 was $0.3B. Usually, I do the month to date through the current day, but since we know that 1/19-1/21 were zero, I’m just going to say the January deficit through 21 days was $40B vs $43B in 2012…so virtually the same. Revenue is flat, outlays are flat..deficit is flat. There are 8 business days left…still plenty of time for 2013 to make a run, but through 3 weeks, there is no evidence of increased revenues due to the expiration of the payroll tax cut and the tak hike on high earners. I would expect some delay…especially on the income tax hike…but honestly, those hikes were so tiny, perhaps $15B per month…they could easily get lost in the noise, especially in what promises to be a chaotic 1Q.
