Mystery -- June 6, 2022

Re-posting.

Link here. 

WASHINGTON—An unprecedented gush of income tax revenue is flowing into the federal government, driven in part by investors and business owners, and the size and speed of the increase has surprised even the nation’s fiscal-policy experts.

Individual income tax collections are poised to reach $2.6 trillion, or 10.6% of the economy in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That is up from 9.1% in 2021 and would mark a record in the 109-year history of the tax, topping the war-tax receipts of 1944 and the dot-com boom of 2000.

The surge has been particularly notable in taxes outside paycheck withholding, a signal that capital gains and business income are driving the trend. The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates collections of non-withheld taxes reached an inflation-adjusted $522 billion in April 2022, compared with just over $300 billion in 2018 and 2019, before the pandemic.While that is part of the explanation, CBO officials and other economists who monitor tax collections say tax revenue became disconnected from other economic data in ways they still don’t fully understand.

“There’s a part that is unexplained that we need more time to figure out,” CBO director Phillip Swagel said. “It’s a mystery. It’s a maybe happy mystery, to have strong revenues.”

CBO officials identified several factors for further study. Perhaps, they said, a greater-than-usual share of capital gains were short-term gains taxed at rates up to 40.8% instead of 23.8%. Perhaps income grew faster than expected for those in the highest tax brackets compared with others, which means more income than forecast would be taxed at higher rates. The administration is waiting for more granular data to come in as it analyzes what is happening, said Lily Batchelder, assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy.

It is individual income taxes—more so than corporate or payroll taxes—that are most notably above forecasts. Individual income taxes include those levied on wages, capital gains from investments and business profits reported on owners’ personal tax returns. Normally, income tax collections echo the broader economy, so money coming into the government alongside tax returns reflects what happened during 2021.

Last year was unusual, with historically high inflation, a booming stock market fueling a booming housing market and trillions in government aid sloshing through the economy. And that may have yielded weird one-time changes in tax collections as people sold investments and used government aid. Inflation may have pushed up nominal income before tax-bracket indexing is able to catch up.