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September 22, 2016      5:44 PM

Greenfield: Projecting revenue that will be available for the next Legislature

Our resident number cruncher writes that “Even with a positive rate of growth for tax revenues in FY17, these growth rates will be applied to a lower base. Unless growth rates are increased substantially, tax collections in FY17 will again be $1 billion less than in the CRE.”

With the close of Fiscal Year 2016, signers of the Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) pledge can rejoice. They can genuflect to the statue of Grover Norquist and proclaim that – under their brilliance – tax revenue declined while maternal mortality increased and special education services suffered. Is that not fulfilling the ATR directives of lower taxes, smaller government?

My sarcasm aside, tax collections at the close of the fiscal year, as Comptroller Hegar stated, were less than the Comptroller estimated in October 2015. While the Comptroller had estimated that all funds tax collections for FY16 would be $49.7 billion, actual collections were $48.5 billion, $1.2 billion less than the estimate and $3.3 billion less than FY15 tax revenue.

Figure 1 shows the cumulative YTD growth for FY10 through FY16. Only FY09 (-8.5 percent) and FY10 (-6.5 percent) had greater declines in tax collection than FY16 (-6.2 percent).  Following the decline in FY10, tax collections increased by 9.9 percent in FY11.

The full column from Dr. Stuart Greenfield can be found in the R&D Department.

By Dr. Stuart Greenfield