Update: April Tax Revenues 2nd-Highest in History; Will Media Notice?

May 11th, 2006 9:30 AM

A stunning announcement was made by the Treasury Department Wednesday. As reported by the Associated Press: “A flood of income tax payments pushed up government receipts to the second-highest level in history in April, giving the country a sizable surplus for the month.”

(Update: At the end of this piece, I predicted this announcement would not be widely reported. Well, though all three broadcast networks addressed the tax cuts agreed upon in the House on their evening programs Wednesday -- with the NBC "Nightly News" and the CBS "Evening News" both doing major segments on the ramifications of the House's decision -- not one of these evening news programs bothered to inform their viewers about April's near-record tax revenues.)

Of course, this quite flies in the face of the regular media carping and whining about the president’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts negatively impacting federal revenues, doesn’t it?

Regardless, the article continued: “In its monthly accounting of the government's books, the Treasury Department said Wednesday that revenue for the month totaled $315.1 billion as Americans filed their tax returns by the April deadline. The gusher of tax revenue pushed total receipts up by 13.4 percent from April 2005.”

And which April in history is actually in first place? If you said April 2000, you’d be wrong: “It marked the largest one-month receipt total since the government collected $332 billion in revenue in April 2001, reflecting a boom in capital gains from stock investors lucky enough to cash out their investments before the bursting of the stock market bubble in early 2000.”

Of course, given the drive-by media’s penchant against tax cuts, the question is whether or not this fabulous news will be widely reported. Not much of a stretch here, but my guess is “No.”