Florida Trend | Florida's Business Authority

State Tax Collections Top Estimate

State general revenue came in $20.4 million higher than anticipated in August.

A report posted Friday by the Legislature’s Office of Economic & Demographic Research said the state collected nearly $3.44 billion in net general revenue during the month.

The amount topped a projection that was made Aug. 16 by the state’s Revenue Estimating Conference.

The conference, a panel of economists, meets periodically to revise tax projections.

Before the Aug. 16 revisions, general-revenue collections had been coming in up to 20 percent higher than projected.

In the August revisions, the conference bumped up projected general revenue for the current 2022-2023 fiscal year and the 2023-2024 year by about $5.3 billion.

General revenue is made up of a series of types of taxes.

The higher-than-anticipated collections in August largely stemmed from insurance taxes, which came in $28.8 million over estimate.

Sales-tax collections were $22.4 million less than anticipated.

Economists also used the report to continue to warn about relatively low consumer savings.

The personal-savings rate stood at 3.5 percent in August, down from 5 percent for June and July.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the rate in the 2018-2019 fiscal year stood at 7.9 percent.

The rate ballooned to 33.7 percent in April 2020 as people cut back on spending and started receiving federal stimulus checks.