(Source: MIRS.news, Published 10/13/2022) The crystal ball is a little murky as to what the lame duck session will tackle given all the unknowns out there, but one thing for sure, if lawmakers want to come back and spend a little more cash, they will have more than a "little more."
Fiscal agency reports released today show that for September, the last month of the state's fiscal year, the state brought in $324.4 million more into the General Fund than expected and between $150 million and $125 million more into the School Aid Fund.
It'll be a few months until the official book closing for Fiscal Year (FY) 2022, but as it looks now, the House Fiscal Agency is figuring the state will finish the fiscal year with $1.85 billion more than forecasted in May in both the General Fund and School Aid Fund.
The Senate Fiscal Agency is estimating a little less -- $1.4 billion, which still isn't too shabby.
The state still has about $6 billion left on its balance sheet after spending $1 billion on a few economic development projects last month.
According to the reports, the extra money is coming in from nearly every revenue source. Sales tax, income tax, business taxes, use tax, gambling taxes, marijuana taxes, oil & gas taxes . . . basically everything but tobacco, beer and wine taxes and Lottery numbers.
Overall, September 2022 revenue is up 13.4% from September 2021 revenue.
The Consensus Revenue Estimating Conference (CREC) in May 2022 showed the Senate and House agencies had projected another historic year for taxes and, after all the money is counted, could be much higher than originally projected.
The year-to-date school aid fund was more than $350 million above the CREC projections in the House and about $402 million in the Senate. The school aid fund revenue was due to sales and income tax collections, which made up for lower-than-projected lottery numbers.
While sales tax brought in over $1.2 billion more in 2022, the sales of beer, wine, liquor and tobacco fell, with tobacco taxes falling nearly $100 million, beer and wine falling more than $1 million and liquor falling more than $1 million. Those numbers were also reflected in the Senate.
