We Expect No Major Revision of Wages and Salaries for 2021 in the Upcoming July Annual Revisions of the National Income and Product Accounts: We Probably Need to Look Elsewhere for the Source of Much of the Recent Strong Growth in Federal Individual Income Tax Revenues
Posted on June 9, 2022 We do not expect economywide wages and salaries as measured in the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs) to be revised upwards for 2021 when the Bureau of Economic Analysis–which compiles and publishes the NIPAs–undertakes its annual revisions in late July. We reach that conclusion from data released this week […]
Growth in Withheld Tax Payments Dropped Sharply in May
Posted on May 31, 2022 The amount of federal income and payroll taxes withheld from workers’ paychecks and remitted to the U.S. Treasury Department–what we call tax withholding–grew much more slowly in May than in the prior recent months, according to our estimates. The amount of tax withholding, which moves with overall wages and salaries […]
Individual Income Tax Payments with Federal Tax Return Filings Have Surged This Year
Posted on May 4, 2022 The counting by the Internal Revenue Service isn’t finished, but it is crystal clear that individuals’ income tax payments with 2021 tax returns filed by mid-April have surged this year. Tax payments from the beginning of February (when the filing season roughly began) through May 3 this year have totaled […]
Tax Withholding Growth Accelerates Some in April
Posted on April 29, 2022 The amounts of federal income and payroll taxes withheld by employers from paychecks–what we call tax withholding–grew faster in April than in March, we estimate, after having grown faster in March than in February. The amount of tax withholding, which moves with overall wages and salaries in the economy, was […]
The Average Size of Individual Income Tax Refunds Continues to Run Ahead of the Pace of Recent Years: But the Increase Has Been Getting Smaller, Probably as a Result of Law Changes, as More Higher-Earners Have Filed Their Returns
Posted on April 24, 2022 It’s a busy season for tracking tax receipts, and we turn our focus back to individual income tax refunds. With almost 80 million refunds sent out to taxpayers so far this filing season (through April 15 in the IRS’s latest weekly report released last Friday), the average size of a […]
Corporate Income Tax Receipts in April Continued to Increase, But at a Lower Rate Than in Recent Months
Posted on April 23, 2022 Most corporations made their first quarterly payment of federal estimated income taxes for the 2022 tax year in mid-April, and their final payments for the 2021 tax year were due as well. Those amounts in April reached $92 billion, we estimate, including some generally small amounts (an estimated $ 1 […]
Federal Income Tax Payments with Tax Return Filings Are Looking Very Strong with More Payments Still to Be Counted
Posted on April 21, 2022 The counting continues of individual income tax payments with federal tax return filings that were due to the IRS a few days ago, but it is looking like a very high amount of payments will be recorded when the counting is completed over the next couple of weeks. The amounts […]
The Average Size of Individual Tax Refunds Continues to Run Well Ahead of the Amount in Recent Years, About Halfway Through the Refund Season
Posted on April 2, 2022 The Internal Revenue Service has disbursed about 58 million individual income tax refunds so far this tax filing season (through the week ending March 25). The average size of those refunds is $3,263, which is about 10 percent to 12 percent higher than the amount at the same rough point […]
Withholding Tax Receipts Show Strength in March
Posted on March 31, 2022 In what is probably a good sign for the economy, tax withholding–the economywide amounts withheld by employers from workers’ paychecks for income and payroll taxes and remitted daily to the U.S Treasury–grew faster in March than in January and February, we estimate. In March, we estimate that withholding was 10.5 […]
The Average Size of Individual Tax Refunds Is Up by About 10 Percent So Far This Filing Season Compared to Recent Years
Posted on March 20, 2022 The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has disbursed about 45 million refunds to individuals so far this tax filing season (through the week ending March 11), and the average size of those refunds, about $3,350, is up between 9 percent and 13 percent compared to roughly the same point in the […]
Tax Withholding Continued to Grow at a Rapid Pace in February: We Might Be Seeing the Effects of Stronger Wage Gains Among Lower-Income Individuals
Posted on March 1, 2022 Tax withholding–amounts withheld from workers’ paychecks for income and payroll taxes and remitted daily to the U.S. Treasury Department–was up by 9.2 percent in February compared to February of a year ago, we estimate. Such year-over-year growth in withholding was about the same in January at 9.5 percent (see chart […]
Third Quarter 2021 Data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages: No Surprises–Strong Economywide Wage Growth in 2021
Posted on February 23, 2022 I see two takeaways from today’s preliminary and incomplete release of the 2021Q3 data on wages from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW). First, the data on overall wage growth are lining up with what the corresponding National Income and Product Account (NIPA) data are showing (see chart […]
Quarterly Estimated Payments by Individuals Continued to Grow Robustly in January
Posted on February 2, 2022 Quarterly estimated payments by individuals of income and payroll taxes continued to move up sharply in January, following strong quarterly payments over the past year. Based on amounts reported by the U.S. Treasury Department in its Daily Treasury Statements, we estimate that total nonwithheld receipts rose from about $125 billion […]
Tax Withholding Growth Slows in January
Posted on January 28, 2022 Tax withholding–the amount of income and payroll taxes withheld from paychecks and remitted daily to the U.S. Treasury–is always hard to interpret in January, being affected by year-end bonuses on Wall Street and elsewhere, but its growth has slowed this January. We measure that tax withholding was about 9.5 percent […]
Indexing of Social Security Benefits and Tax Parameters for Inflation: An Unusually Large Difference Between the Measures for 2022 With Future Effects on the Economy That Depend on How Inflation Moves
Posted on January 18, 2022 Summary Social Security benefits and many tax parameters (such as the tax brackets and standard deduction) are indexed to inflation by law. As a result, effective January 1, 2022, Social Security benefits for a beneficiary rose by 5.9 percent, and the indexed tax parameters by only about 3.1 percent. Different […]
Updated Estimates of Tax Withholding Growth Through the Pandemic: A Smaller Drop and Smaller Rebound
Posted on January 7, 2022 Summary We have revised our estimates of constant law tax withholding growth on a year-over-year basis (that is, removing certain legislative effects and comparing amounts in a month with those in the same month a year ago) to incorporate new information on the effects of tax law changes enacted in […]
Tax Withholding Jumps Sharply in December–But Largely Due to Payments of Deferred Taxes from 2020
Posted on January 3, 2022 Happy New Year, everyone. Today we received the Daily Treasury Statement for the last day of December, identifying the final amount of tax payments for calendar year 2021. Amounts of income and payroll taxes withheld from paychecks and remitted to the Treasury–what we refer to as tax withholding–jumped sharply in […]
No Signs from Tax Collections Data of Weakening Corporate Profits: Corporate Income Tax Payments in December Remain Strong
Posted on December 19, 2021 Quarterly payments of income taxes by corporations on profits in the fourth quarter have remained strong in December. Such payments in December, as in September for the third quarter, are about 40 percent above pre-pandemic amounts for the same month (see chart below). The December amounts this year are based […]
Withholding Tax Payments Deferred by the CARES Act Are Coming Due: We Expect Big Payments at the End of December
Posted on December 10, 2021 Summary We expect that withheld amounts of income and payroll taxes remitted to the Treasury Department will jump in late December as a result of the payment of payroll tax amounts that were allowed by last year’s CARES Act to be deferred. The Act allowed payment of those amounts to […]
High and Rising Growth Continues in Economywide Tax Withholding and Wages
Posted on November 29, 2021 Summary Withholding of income and payroll taxes remained strong in November, up by 17.6 percent over the past two years, we estimate. Two-year growth around that level in recent months hasn’t been seen since 2006. Wages and salaries as measured in the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs) have been […]
New Data on Economywide Wages and Salaries for 2021Q2 Appear Roughly Consistent with Amounts Currently Measured in the National Income and Product Accounts
Posted on November 23, 2021 Happy Thanksgiving Week to everyone. New data on tax collections in November are somewhat sparse, with no major quarterly payments due from individuals or corporations, and with no payment deadlines for final payments with tax returns. Mostly November tax collections consist of income and payroll tax amounts withheld from paychecks. […]
Economywide Wages Have Been Improving in Recent Months, and the BLS Establishment Report Shows the Least Improvement of Major Measures
Posted on November 9, 2021 The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its monthly establishment report last Friday, showing unambiguously that employers added many jobs in October, and also more than its preliminary estimates for August and September. That’s good news. Regardless, the establishment report is showing the least amount of increase in wages among […]
Growth in Tax Withholding Remained Strong in October Despite a Pullback from September’s Anomalous Amounts
Posted on November 3, 2021 First, we measure that economywide income and payroll taxes withheld from workers’ paychecks and remitted to the U.S. Treasury (so-called tax withholding) was strong in October, increasing by an estimated 15.8 percent compared to the amount from the same month two years ago, before the pandemic (see solid line in […]
Corporate Income Tax Payments Continued to Boom in October
Posted on October 20, 2021 The mid-month payment of corporate income taxes continued to be very strong in October. We estimate, based on the amounts reported in the Daily Treasury Statement, that corporate income tax payments mid-month were up by about 60 percent compared to the payments in the comparable period in October 2020, and, […]
Why the National Average Wage Index for Social Security Increased in 2020 Almost Like It Wasn’t a Recessionary Year: Think Wage Gains of Higher-Income Individuals
Posted on October 14, 2021 We’ve been tracking the average wage index (AWI) for Social Security for some time, ever since it looked like the index was going to take a big drop in 2020 as a result of the pandemic-induced recession. Such an outcome would have caused a big drop in future Social Security […]