revenue

STATE FACES YET ANOTHER REVENUE SHORTAGE – Going into Friday’s Revenue Estimating Conference, both the House Fiscal Agency (HFA) and the Senate Fiscal Agency (SFA) have predicted the state will face a deficit in the 2008-09 Fiscal Year that will approach $500 million. The numbers from the May Revenue Estimating Conference establish the income levels that legislators will use in both adjusting the current fiscal year’s spending and in developing the budget for the next fiscal year.

Michigan's major taxes netted nearly $1.2 billion in March, up by a whopping 22.3 percent over the same month a year ago, according to the figures released Thursday by the Senate Fiscal Agency.
For the 2007-08 fiscal year to date the state has collected $7.7 billion, up 5.9 percent from the same time a year ago.
The state saw major increases in income tax, sales tax and oil and gas severance tax collections, while dealing with declines in Single Business Tax, use tax and real estate transfer tax collections.

School officials this year will likely wake up to the reality Michigan homeowners are facing: declining property values mean the loss of real money — value upon sale for homeowners and tax dollars for school districts.

News is percolating through the capital that sinking property and home values around the state could force state lawmakers to readjust the state school aid budget, because the dollars they thought would be available may not materialize. That could hurt efforts to create smaller high schools and pump more state support into early childhood education.