State general revenue came in $20.4 million higher than anticipated in August.
A report posted Friday by the Florida 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.
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Insurance companies and policy holders pay insurance taxes.
Taxes paid by insurance companies are funded by policy holders.
The higher the insurance premium the higher the amount of taxes paid.
There is no incentive for politicians to seek lower insurance premiums for policy holders because why reduce a source of income for the beneficiaries of those taxes; including firefighter and police retirement pensions?
You can safely bet both those groups don’t want to reduce policy holder premiums because it reduces $ they receive.
Of course, insurance companies with their overpaid chief executives and extremely high lobby costs, don’t want insurance policies to be too low.
Politicians get more money from insurance companies when insurance companies have more $ to spend on lobbying.
Follow the Money and it is easy to see why GREEDY politicians, insunce companies and others have no incentive to lower insurance premiums because of the Cash Cow insurance taxes tied to them.
– The higher-than-anticipated collections in August largely stemmed from insurance taxes
That’s troubling. I looked to move a homeowners policy last month and the best rate I could find was nearly triple the existing policy. I hope that the insurance taxes aren’t to blame.