Tax Withholding Growth Remains Strong in February, Though Less So Than in January
Posted on February 27, 2021 By our measure, income and payroll taxes withheld from workers’ paychecks and remitted by employers to the Treasury Department rose in February by 4.7 percent above amounts remitted in February 2020 (see chart below). That measure is adjusted to remove the estimated effects of tax law changes, but is a […]
New Economywide Wage and Employment Data for 2020Q3: Possible Downward NIPA Wage Revision and an Anticipated Full-Year Decline in the Social Security National Average Wage Index
February 24, 2021 Summary Partial data for 2020Q3 from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, indicate a possible upcoming downward revision, perhaps on the order of 1.5 percent, to wages and salaries in the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs) for the quarter. The NIPA […]
Introducing Withholding Comparisons to Two Years Ago
Posted on February 21, 2021 We’re coming up on a year now since the pandemic caused shutdowns and the severe economic contraction. Here we address the purely measurement implications of that one-year mark on how we assess the current income and payroll tax withholding data. The way we normally measure withholding growth is on a […]
Corporate Income Tax Payments Are Rebounding; Will Big Refunds Reduce the Net Amount Received by the Federal Government This Fiscal Year?
Posted on February 18, 2021 Gross corporate income tax payments–that is, the payments not reduced by refunds received–have rebounded over the past three months: the mid-month payment of income taxes by corporations has increased compared to year-ago amounts. January and February are small corporate payment months–mainly reflecting quarterly payments by the minority of firms not […]
Withholding Growth in the First Half of February: Still Strong But Less So Than in January
Posted on February 14, 2021 Below are some bullet points on recent developments in withholding tax remittances along with two charts: Daily tax withholding growth in the first half of February (measured relative to year-ago amounts and adjusted to remove the estimated effects of tax law changes) has come down some since the elevated level […]
Growth in Economywide Wages and Salaries: Different Signals from BEA and BLS
Posted on February 7, 2021 We won’t let Super Bowl Sunday stop us from posting, so let’s get right to it. Having a gauge on how economywide wages and salaries are doing is important, especially during the recovery from a recession, and we are currently getting somewhat different signals from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of […]
Individual Nonwithheld Payments Grew Sharply in January: The Effects of Accelerating Income into 2020 in Anticipation of Tax Increases?
Posted on February 1, 2021 According to the Treasury Department’s daily tabulations, individual nonwithheld receipts in January–consisting largely of the last quarterly estimated income tax payment for 2020–grew by about 17 percent compared to the amount in January 2020. That is the highest January growth since 2013 (see chart below). A significant factor behind the […]