The following data was gathered from the US Treasury website and consists of end-of-month totals for various entries in the Treasuries accounting books. The data is released daily and totals on a monthly basis. I used wget, grep, and Excel to gather the data and build the charts. Infinite methods of gathering and parsing the data exist. I am sure others can find a more elegant solution than I used.
I like the data because it is raw and I am able to chart whatever I want. This weekend I looked at the tax withholding and corporate tax numbers. An automated process could easily look at the daily data and find all sorts of good information. Since my time is limited, I’ve decided to look at only the monthly data. NOTE: The last data point, August, is estimated based on the daily data. I will update the charts with the final monthly numbers when posted by the Treasury. If the charts looks significantly different then I will repost them.
The Withheld Taxes chart below shows the year over year change of tax withholdings. I compare January with January, February with February, etc… The chart shows a 3 month moving average of those Y/Y changes. The short moving average smooths the charts somewhat and removes a big number from January one year that shows up in February the next year. Not much discussion is needed to capture the essence of this chart. Less people are working and less taxes are being withheld. Services such as TrimTabs.com use the daily data to analyzes employment statistics. It is very accurate because taxes are fixed and people have to pay them if they are employed.
Corporate taxes continue to decrease to around 25% less tax dollars to the government than in 2008. One can assume that real profits are down by that much. “Real” profits are those corporations pay taxes on. The number submitted to investors is “created” as evidence of whatever story the company wants to present. The IRS doesn’t play that game.
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