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Florida's tax collections top projection
Florida’s general-revenue tax collections in November topped a forecast by 6.9 percent, as lawmakers get ready to draw up a budget during the legislative session that will start next week.
The Legislature’s Office of Economic & Demographic Research posted a report Tuesday that said net general revenue for the month totaled $3.74 billion, $242.6 million over a projection issued in August.
The higher-than-expected collections were mostly attributed to sales taxes, corporate income taxes and insurance taxes.
But among the areas that did not meet projections were documentary-stamp taxes, which are collected on real-estate transactions.
Those taxes came in $4.3 million below the projection of $104.6 million.
The report also repeated earlier cautions about lagging consumer savings.
The office has used the 2018-2019 fiscal year as a benchmark because it was the last full year before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the economy.
During that year, 7.9 percent of personal income went into savings.
By comparison, a “subpar” 4.1 percent of income went into savings in November, slightly up from 4 percent in October.
General revenue collections are closely watched because they play a key role in funding education, health-care and prison programs.
The legislative session will start Jan. 9.
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