The US Daily Cash Surplus for 9/16/2013 was $62.1B as the much anticipated quarterly corporate taxes started flowing in….soon to be followed by individual quarterly payments over the rest of the week. In yesterday’s USDD, I mentioned that the year ago surplus (9/17/2012) had been $54B, and that topping that by $5-10B would be a pretty good indicator. We got +$8B….which is pretty good….it doesn’t Wow!! me, but it should be seen as a pretty solid sign that revenues are not going to fall off a cliff or anything(well…except for the TARP piece).
Yesterday’s revenue haul brings us back within $4.5B of last years revenue, now down only ~2%. Corporate taxes, which had been down 15% are now up 2%, and taxes not withheld are up to +8% from 4%. Revenues should continue to flow strongly for the rest of the week….what we are interested in is how strongly. My initial forecast for September 2013 was a $70B surplus. Although it is still early, this is starting to look like a bit of a stretch since we are currently at $20B surplus through 16 days. Pulling in another $50B surplus from here out looks unlikely, but if tax receipts over the next week or so come in stronger than expected, it’s not impossible, especially since September 2013 has an additional Monday (9/30) which we didn’t have last year. The combination of the extra day of strong Monday inflows could be enough, but I won’t be holding my breath.
**update**
It did just occur to me that Fannie and Freddie will be making their quarterly payments to treasury later this month…Last year, that was good for about $5B. I wouldn’t expect another $60B payment payday loan like we saw in June, but It will probably exceed last year’s $5B by a healthy margin, making the $70B a bit more likely than I implied when this was originally posted
