State And Local Tax Profit Fell For Fourth Consecutive Quarter
Collections in the three months ended Sept. 30 fell 6.7 percent from the period last year to $266.5 billion, the Census Bureau said in a statement from Washington today. Property-tax income was the only one of four main categories to rise, it said.
The worst economic slump since the Great Depression has forced states to cut spending, raise taxes and pass down costs to local governments to cope with $193 billion of combined budget deficits in the current fiscal year, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said in a report this month. The gap is likely to grow next year as income shrinks again, the study said.
“States will continue to struggle to find the revenue needed to support critical public services for a number of years,” the Washington-based research organization said.
State and local corporate income-tax collections fell the most among the four main types in the third quarter, the Census figures showed, down 18 percent to $9.5 billion.
Individual income-tax revenue declined 11.7 percent from last year to $58.2 billion, and general sales taxes fell 9 percent to $69.7 billion, the Census Bureau said.
Other declining levies were tobacco, down 2 percent, and document and stock-transfer charges, down 26 percent.
Property taxes increased 3.5 percent to $80 billion, the bureau said, as changes in real-estate assessments used to set tax rates trailed declines in market prices.
Other taxes to rise were motor fuels, up 1 percent, and alcoholic beverages, up 0.7 percent from the third quarter of 2008, the Census Bureau said.
“Revenue collections will continue to be weak in the October-December quarter,” the Albany, New York-based Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government said in a November analysis of preliminary third-quarter tax data.