Published: June 10, 2022
-CNS News
(CNSNews.com) – The federal government collected a record $3,374,629,000,000 in total taxes in the first eight months of fiscal 2022 (October through May), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.
Before this year, the largest October-through-May federal tax collections came in fiscal 2021, when the Treasury collected $2,833,846,070,000 in total taxes in inflation-adjusted May 2022 dollars.
This fiscal year’s October-through-May tax collections of $3,374,629,000,000 are $540,782,930,000 (or 19.08 percent) more than that.
The record $3,374,629,000,000 in total taxes that the federal government collected in the first eight months of this fiscal year included $1,934,657,000,000 in individual income taxes; $978,948,000,000 in social insurance and retirement taxes; $223,498,000,000 in corporation income taxes; $65,817,000,000 in customs duties; $53,384,000,000 in excise taxes; $21,633,000,000 in estate and gift taxes; and $96,692,000,000 in “miscellaneous receipts.”
While collecting its record $3,374,629,000,000 in taxes in the first eight months of fiscal 2022, the federal government also spent $3,800,854,000,000—and, thus, ran a deficit of $426,226,000,000.
The $3,800,854,000,000 that the federal government spent in the first eight months of this fiscal year was still less than the record $5,071,503,630,000 (in constant May 2022 dollars) that the federal government spent in the first eight months of fiscal 2021.
While federal spending has declined this year from last year’s record high, this year’s spending in the first eight months of the fiscal year is still more than the federal government spent in the first eight months of any year prior to fiscal 2020 (when it spent $4,445,575,070,000 in constant May 2020 dollars).
The Department of Health and Human Services continued to lead all federal departments and agencies in spending through the first eight months of fiscal 2022. It spent $1,054,754,000,000. It was followed by the Social Security Administration, which spent $839,061,000,000; the Department of the Treasury, which spent $769,511,000, including $423,100,000,000 for interest on the federal debt and $346,411,000,000 on “other” expenses.
The Department of Defense-Military Programs placed fourth, spending $470,865,000,000.
(The historical dollar numbers in this story were converted into May 2022 dollars using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.)
