Friday, March 5, 2010

HERE IS YOUR GOVERNMENT'S FINANCIAL STATEMENT FOR THE FIRST FOUR MONTHS OF THEIR YEAR

If you are a successful business owner you probably have already studied your financial statement for the last few months to determine if there are some steps that you need to take to become more profitable. I thought you might be interested in a summary of our government's first four months.

The federal government ran a budget deficit of $434 billion in the first four months of fiscal year 2010, according to the latest estimate released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Feb. 4. (Monthly Budget Review)

  • Outlays declined by 4% compared to the same period in FY 2009, and revenues dropped by 11%. Receipts in January were $23 billion (or 10%) lower than receipts recorded in January 2009.
  • The amount of withheld individual income and payroll taxes declined by $11 billion (or 7%), with approximately one-third of the decline attributable to provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, CBO said.
  • Corporate receipts declined by $2 billion.
  • Overall for FY 2010, receipts were down by $83 billion (or 11%) compared to the same period in FY 2009.
  • Two-thirds of that decline resulted from lower withholding from employees' pay for income and payroll taxes.
  • Net corporate receipts declined by $18 billion (or 34%) because of a combination of higher refunds and lower payments of estimated taxes.
  • This decline “can be attributed to weak corporate profits and the effects of recent legislation that extended the period over which corporations could apply current-year losses to offset income in previous years,” CBO said.

    The budget review is available at http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/110xx/doc11041/January2010MBR.pdf

If you were the owner, what changes would you make?

Larry Kopsa CPA