CNS News – by Terence P. Jeffrey
The federal government collected a record $2,121,987,000,000 in total taxes through the first six months of fiscal 2022 (October through March), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.
This also marked the first time that federal tax collections have exceeded $2 trillion in the first half of a fiscal year.
Prior to this year, the most taxes the federal government ever collected in the first six months of a fiscal year was in fiscal 2021, when the Treasury collected $1,849,508,090,000 in taxes (in constant March 2022 dollars) in the October-through-March period.
The record $2,121,987,000,000 in total taxes that the Treasury collected in the first half of this fiscal year included $1,124,485,000,000 in individual income taxes; $697,779,000,000 in social insurance and retirement taxes; $127,259,000,000 in corporation income taxes; $48,559,000,000 in customs duties; $38,712,000,000 in excise taxes; $14,275,000,000 in estate and gift taxes; and $70,917,000,000 in what the Treasury calls “miscellaneous receipts.”
Even while collecting this record $2,121,987,000,000 in taxes through the first half of this fiscal year, the federal government ran a deficit of $668,267,000,000. That is because the government spent $2,790,254,000,000 during the period.
That is the second-highest spending the federal government has ever done in the first six months of a fiscal year. The record for spending during the first half of a fiscal year occurred in fiscal 2021, when the Treasury spent $3,701,519,160,000 (in constant March 2022 dollars) in the October-through-March period.
The Department of Health and Human Services spent $793,880,000,000 in the October-through-March period of this fiscal year, leading all federal agencies in spending. The Social Security Administration was second with $622,933,000,000. The Department of Defense-Military Programs was third with $358,398,000,000.
The next highest category of spending was interest paid on Treasury debt securities, which was $290,289,000,000 in the October-through-March period.
(Historical dollar figures in this story were converted into constant March 2022 dollars using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.)
