Home
What a train wreck ....
A close look at the state’s new revenue projections makes clear they are highly optimistic, even after this week’s cut in the forecast. Kansas says it expects to collect slightly more personal income tax this year than it did last year, even though, with four months of collections in, they are 11 percent behind last year’s pace.
If the last four months’ performance is similar to the next eight, the state won’t miss its original income tax estimate by $239 million.
It will miss it by $546 million.
And because the state was already scheduled to spend down nearly its entire rainy-day fund balance (which totaled over $700 million in 2013) by the end of this year, it will have to respond to any widening budget gap with some combination of further spending cuts and tax increases.
“They’re clearly expecting income tax revenue to beat last year in April and May, but we’re not on any path to do that,” said Duane Goossen, a former state budget director under governors including Bill Graves, a Republican, and Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat. “I would expect that the estimate is still too high.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/upshot/kansas-announces-big-budget-gap-but-true-gap-may-be-even-larger.html?_r=1&abt=0002&abg=0
A close look at the state’s new revenue projections makes clear they are highly optimistic, even after this week’s cut in the forecast. Kansas says it expects to collect slightly more personal income tax this year than it did last year, even though, with four months of collections in, they are 11 percent behind last year’s pace.
If the last four months’ performance is similar to the next eight, the state won’t miss its original income tax estimate by $239 million.
It will miss it by $546 million.
And because the state was already scheduled to spend down nearly its entire rainy-day fund balance (which totaled over $700 million in 2013) by the end of this year, it will have to respond to any widening budget gap with some combination of further spending cuts and tax increases.
“They’re clearly expecting income tax revenue to beat last year in April and May, but we’re not on any path to do that,” said Duane Goossen, a former state budget director under governors including Bill Graves, a Republican, and Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat. “I would expect that the estimate is still too high.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/upshot/kansas-announces-big-budget-gap-but-true-gap-may-be-even-larger.html?_r=1&abt=0002&abg=0