By Denny Gulino
WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – Anyone wondering about the early effects of the new tax code could see in Tuesday’s U.S. Treasury report on the monthly budget that corporate taxes are indeed going down by a lot more than taxes collected from individuals.
The May deficit was $146.798 billion, the third widest deficit for any May and close to expectations. Incidentally, for the 64 Mays in the record book, 63 were in the red.
This time May showed the third highest deficit of any May. Outlays were $363.9 billion while receipts were $217.1 billion. For the eight months of the fiscal year the red ink is up to $532.2 billion, a 23% wider deficit than through a year earlier.
Interest on the public debt for the month was up to $36 billion, 28% more than in May of last year.
For the fiscal year so far, corporate tax receipts are down 16% with at least some of that decline due to the gathering effects of the new tax law. But individual tax receipts are still up 3% over eight months of the fiscal year ending in September.
For May alone gross corporate tax receipts were down a 43% while individual taxes slipped just 5%.
The Congressional Budget Office widened its forecast for fiscal 2018’s total deficit in early April after passage of the new tax law and the overall budget deal expiring in 2020, anticipating the coming cuts in government revenues. So this fiscal year’s deficit will add a little more than $800 billion to the national debt. Starting in 2020, annual deficits will, the CBO said, return to more than $1 trillion a year.
Budget watchdog groups, which had already called the pre-tax-cut deficits unsustainable, have since redoubled their campaigns for Congress to resume some measure of fiscal discipline – with no evidence that’s in the works.
Adjusted for the fact this latest May had one less Monday and one more Thursday than May 2017, the deficit was considerably less, $131 billion, and the year-to-date deficit was $584 billion, 24% up for the year. Another adjustment in the annual figures was for a $48 billiion addition to outlays “related to recurring benefit payments” shifted to last September.