October 2018 State Tax Collections

Collections Fall Short of Projections Due to Processing Issues. Due to issues related to withholding timing and the new sales tax IT system, October revenues shown below fall short of projections by $683 million. If those issues were not present, personal income tax (PIT) withholding in October would be $1.3 billion higher and sales tax collections would be $289 million higher. Including these amounts would bring total October collections $932 billion above projections (and the fiscal year to date over $1.9 billion above projections). Instead, these amounts will be counted towards November, likely bringing those totals up significantly.

Accounting for Timing Issue, PIT Withholding Remains Strong. October withholding is 11 percent higher than withholding during the same period last year. (This includes the $1.3 billion that will be counted towards November collections and therefore is not included in the figure above.) Through 2018, withholding has grown 9.6 percent above 2017 to date.