State has trouble with tax collections

Apparently, South Carolina has a hard time collecting on taxes. The state Board of Economic Advisors meets today to talk about June, the last month in the fiscal year, but they're already $80 million short for the year.

From The Associated Press:

South Carolina's budget is in worse shape than expected as tax collections have fallen $100 million short of projections, prompting the state's economic oversight board on Monday to order lower estimates for the fiscal year that just started.

The slowing tax collections mean one of the state's reserve accounts will be wiped out and that a second, $187 million rainy- day fund could be tapped for as much as $66 million, said John Rainey, chairman of the state Board of Economic Advisors.

Update: You can have a look at the board's June report here, which shows, on the fifth page, an $81 million difference between expected and actual revenues, mostly because of uncollected sales and income taxes.

It looks like they've actually failed to collect $102 million or so for the general fund, and even more in other taxes, but excess revenue in a few areas (such as investment returns) makes up for some of that.

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