Withholding Taxes Chart

Each business day, the United States Treasury Department publishes a report on the workings of the government’s income and spending. One of the items on this report is the “Withheld Income and Employment Taxes.” (Here in the USA, workers have taxes automatically deducted from each paycheck.) This project charts this data.

Note: The 3Q09 number is way ahead of 3Q08 so far, but that’s probably because some payments were processed a day late. So 2Q09 looks slightly worse than it really was, and 3Q09 will look much better until we get some more data in; then it will drop back down deep into the red. American paychecks are still shrinking and this little calendar blip will be beaten down very quickly.

Current through the Daily Treasury Statement dated July 01, 2009.


Note: 3Q09 is calculated with the first 1 data points of 3Q09 and 3Q08. This
number will bounce around less as we move through the quarter. See the spreadsheet below to follow the calculation day-by-day. The last bar on the right is 3Q09

Note: 2009 is a year-to-date comparision between the first 126 data points of 2009 and 2008.

Spot-Check My Data

You can check my data by entering a year or month into the form above, and clicking the Submit button.

The total for that period will be calculated from the daily totals and shown above when the page reloads. Then you can pull up the appropriate report and see if it matches.

Examples:
2008 for the entire year.
2008-03 for March of 2008.

Remember that the federal fiscal year begins in October. So, to find the annual total for 2007 for example, you need to pull up the report for the last day of September 2007. Also, keep in mind that the Treasury’s numbers don’t ’round to totals’, so totals are often off by a little bit.

About the Data

Note: All of the charts and numbers here are nominal dollars.

The government publishes this data promptly at 4pm Eastern time each business day - the same time that the stock market closes in New York City. I am usually at my computer then, and plug-in the new number.

Drill-Down on the Third Quarter 2009 Calculation

On the spreadsheet below, you can see the up-coming numbers from the third quarter of 2008 that we will be comparing against.

Column 1 is the business-day number in the quarter.
Columns 3-5 are the year-ago quarter we are comparing against.
Columns 6-8 are the data from this quarter so far.
The Total columns are the running totals for each quarter.
The % column is the year-over-year growth rate that appears on the chart above. It is calculated from the two Total columns. Reading down the column, you see what the number has been for each day of the quarter, and the last number is the one that is on the chart now.

Day Date Tax Total Date Tax Total %
1 2008-07-01 12,942 12,942 2009-07-01 15,642 15,642 20.86
2 2008-07-02 9,889 22,831
3 2008-07-03 3,648 26,479
4 2008-07-07 14,330 40,809
5 2008-07-08 2,066 42,875
6 2008-07-09 5,912 48,787
7 2008-07-10 1,888 50,675
8 2008-07-11 6,170 56,845
9 2008-07-14 9,895 66,740
10 2008-07-15 4,884 71,624
11 2008-07-16 12,571 84,195
12 2008-07-17 2,312 86,507
13 2008-07-18 6,948 93,455
14 2008-07-21 9,433 102,888
15 2008-07-22 1,812 104,700
16 2008-07-23 6,746 111,446
17 2008-07-24 1,931 113,377
18 2008-07-25 5,777 119,154
19 2008-07-28 11,215 130,369
20 2008-07-29 1,935 132,304
21 2008-07-30 6,560 138,864
22 2008-07-31 4,099 142,963
23 2008-08-01 15,610 158,573
24 2008-08-04 11,861 170,434
25 2008-08-05 1,969 172,403
26 2008-08-06 8,751 181,154
27 2008-08-07 1,863 183,017
28 2008-08-08 6,082 189,099
29 2008-08-11 10,511 199,610
30 2008-08-12 2,524 202,134
31 2008-08-13 5,825 207,959
32 2008-08-14 1,838 209,797
33 2008-08-15 7,190 216,987
34 2008-08-18 16,071 233,058
35 2008-08-19 1,425 234,483
36 2008-08-20 8,323 242,806
37 2008-08-21 2,243 245,049
38 2008-08-22 5,737 250,786
39 2008-08-25 10,388 261,174
40 2008-08-26 2,773 263,947
41 2008-08-27 6,567 270,514
42 2008-08-28 2,010 272,524
43 2008-08-29 6,905 279,429
44 2008-09-02 21,196 300,625
45 2008-09-03 4,229 304,854
46 2008-09-04 7,530 312,384
47 2008-09-05 5,627 318,011
48 2008-09-08 10,316 328,327
49 2008-09-09 1,850 330,177
50 2008-09-10 4,677 334,854
51 2008-09-11 3,933 338,787
52 2008-09-12 4,881 343,668
53 2008-09-15 12,591 356,259
54 2008-09-16 8,272 364,531
55 2008-09-17 6,800 371,331
56 2008-09-18 1,939 373,270
57 2008-09-19 7,985 381,255
58 2008-09-22 11,059 392,314
59 2008-09-23 2,585 394,899
60 2008-09-24 5,916 400,815
61 2008-09-25 1,977 402,792
62 2008-09-26 5,450 408,242
63 2008-09-29 9,954 418,196
64 2008-09-30 3,993 422,189

Notes

This data does not include taxes collected from self-employed workers. However, the ranks of the self-employed are still very small compared to clock-punchers, so that data can be ignored for our purposes here.

During 2001, and then again in 2003, there were payroll tax cuts to help boost the economy. However, it looks like the majority of the plunge in withholdings in 2000 and 2001 happened before the tax cuts went into affect:

Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001.

Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003

If we get more tax cuts this time around, it will probably be the same story since it takes the government so long to respond. But we will have to watch such an event very closely since it is likely to make the decline in withholdings look worse than it really is.

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