According to a report from the Legislative Counsel Bureau, the Economic Forum missed the General Fund revenue projections for the first half of Fiscal Year 2019 by just 1.4 percent.
According to a table generated by LCB, total collections were $2.171 billion after application of commerce tax credits. That’s $31.3 million more than forecast used to build the proposed state budget.
Total collections for the seven major revenue streams thus far are just a bit more than $1.8 billion.
The largest contributor was the state’s 2 percent sales tax that brought in $617 million in the first six months of Fiscal 2019. That’s $6.7 million or 1.1 percent over the amount forecast.
Collections from the gaming percentage fees charged against gross gaming win are coming in almost exactly at the level projected — $502 million. That’s just a tenth of a percent or $700,000 less than projected.
After two quarters of the fiscal year, the Insurance Premium Tax produced $219.2 million in revenue. That’s just 0.05 percent less than the $219.3 million in the forecast.
The Modified Business Tax is divided into three parts: the non-financial piece paid by almost all businesses, the piece paid by financial institutions and the payments by the mining industry. Together, they total just $25.6 million of the $342.2 million collected by the entire MBT. That’s $8.5 million or 2.5 percent more than the forum projection.
The remaining pieces of the major revenues are the Live Entertainment Tax, Real Property Transfer Tax and Commerce Tax.
The combined gaming and non-gaming entertainment tax came in at $70.6 million, just $400,000 — six tenths of a percent — below the forecast.
The property transfer tax brought in $51.5 million. That’s 2.2 percent, $1.2 million low.
The March status report, however, only includes late payments of $14 million in commerce tax revenue from previous reporting periods since the 2019 commerce tax isn’t due until August.
When all seven of those major revenue streams are added up, they total $1.82 billion. That’s $1.3 million below what was forecast.
Another $314.6 million comes from the nine selected non-major revenue streams that go into the General Fund.
But the nine selected non-major General Fund revenues came in $11.6 million higher than projected — a total of $314.6 million. The largest of those is the $85 million collected from cigarette taxes, a $5 million increase over what was expected.
The second largest non-major is the business License Fee that produced $71.2 million, $2.5 million over the projection, followed by Commercial Filings at the Secretary of State’s office at $48.99 million, an increase of $700,000.
Other revenue streams in that category include the Transportation Connection tax, governmental services tax, liquor tax and short term car rental tax.
In addition to those revenue streams there are several dozen small revenue sources that go into the General Fund. The “all other” revenues total $97.1 million. That’s an increase of 3.3 percent above what was forecast.
The forum projected total General Fund revenues at $8.8 billion over the biennium.