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Governments
Quarterly Tax Survey
You are here: Economic Programs Overview
Governments
Quarterly Tax Survey
To provide estimates of state and local government tax revenues. The United States Code, Title 13, authorizes this data collection and provides for voluntary responses.
The universe for this survey is all state governments, all local governmet property tax collectors and local government non-property tax collectors. All state government tax collection is covered. Although there is coverage error for the property tax collectors, it is believed to be small. The non-property tax collection is not completely covered. Currently, the Census Bureau is redesigning the entire survey with special emphasis on the non-property tax collection portion.
Government tax authorities report tax revenues by type of tax. Most local governments report only property tax collections and some report significant non-property revenues such as income and sales taxes. State governments report data for more than 25 types of taxes including personal income, sales, corporate income, motor fuel sales, motor vehicle license, death, and gift taxes.
Data are reported for tax collections during the preceding calendar quarter. Data collection begins during the 1st month after each quarter and continues for about 3 months. Data collection is quarterly since 1962, however information was not released for the 3rd quarter 1992 thorugh the 2nd quarter 1993. Historical aggregate data covering the unpublished quarters are available in the 3rd quarter 1993 publication in tables 1-3.
Data on property taxes are collected from a mail-out/mail-back survey of about 5,400 selected local property tax collection agencies. Property taxes of local governments are estimated from a probability sample of county areas selected using a startified sample procedure. A compilation of data from mail-out/mail-back data collection of all 50 states yields data on state government tax collections. A nonprobability sample of 111 local governments with significant non-property tax collections yields the local government data on non-property tax collections.
The more than 3,100 county areas are stratified by population, and 592 areas are selected in the sample. All local tax collectors in county areas with population exceeding 200,000, and all cities and counties with quarterly tax revenue exceeding $60 million are selected with certainty. A random sample is taken within each remaining stratum. Within each selected county area, all local property tax authorities receive a form, with the number of tax authorities in an area ranging from one to hundreds. Samples of local governments are re-selected every 5 years; the latest sample was drawn in 1997.
National estimates are a summation of state and weighted local government property tax data based on survey results. Imputation of non-property tax collections in smaller local governments is based on data collected from the annual finance survey.
Quarterly Summary of State and Local Government Tax Revenue reports are released 3 months after each quarterly reference period. The reports contain national totals by type of tax with historical comparisons and state totals for major taxes in the state governments. Revisions to historical data reflect the replacement of estimates with actual totals and all data become final after two years.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Federal Reserve Board use the data for econometric models of the economy.
State and local governments use the data for trend analysis in various types of taxes and for regional comparisons. Business and financial market analysts follow tax trends through these data.
Provides the most current and comprehensive source of data available on state and local tax collections, and an important indicator of the direction of government finances.
State Government Tax
Collections Survey
Annual Survey of State
and Local Government Finances
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You are here: Economic Programs Overview
Governments
Quarterly Tax Survey
