According to the just released Monthly Treasury Statement, in April the US Treasury collected $456 billion and spent $273 billion, resulting in a budget surplus of $182 billion, higher than the $179 billion expected, and well above last year's $106.5 billion surplus. In a surprising jump in government revenues, receipts rose 3.9% y/y in April while outlays plunged a whopping 17.7% y/y. The increase in the surplus is due entirely to calendar quirks and a shift in the timing of some corporate income tax payments.

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As SMRA notes, increasingly it looks as though no deficit-increasing fiscal policies will be enacted in time to have a significant impact on the current fiscal year. The bill signed into law last week to fund government spending through September is estimated by CBO to boost discretionary spending by $15 billion for the current fiscal year.

For the 7 months in the fiscal Year To Date through April 2017, the Treasury collected $1.929 trillion in tax revenues, up $14 billion from the $1.915 trillion collected fir the same period in 2016.

As the chart below shows, on a YTD basis, after lagging for the past 4 months, as of April the amount of taxes collected YTD has set a new record at just under $2 trillion.

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Despite the record tax collections, for the YTD period, the toal deficit was $344.4BN, down modestly from $352.9BN last year, thanks again to the recent jump in receipts which were up 0.7% YTD while outlays rose 0.2%. We expect the deficit to grow again next month once the artificial spending considerations associated with last month's debt ceiling worries are no longer an issue, at least until September.

The largest portion of the tax revenue collected YTD came from individual income tax, which was $945 billion. This was followed by Social Security and other payroll taxes, equal to $870 billion. Income taxes collected from US corporations amounted to only $160 billion and was just over the $154 billion in other taxes and duties collected. Corporate tax receipts soared 67.4% on the timing shift of some payments. For the fiscal year to-date, corporate tax receipts were up a far more modest 1.5%.

With some 153.2 million people employed in the United States in April, this means that the $1.929 trillion in taxes collected equaled approximately $12,600 taxes collected per worker for the first 7 months of the year, on average.