The United States posted its first April deficit in 26 years today, a record $20.91 billion shortfall caused by a deep recession that collapsed revenues in the year's biggest tax collection month, the US Treasury said today.
The April deficit was largely in line with analysts' consensus forecasts for a $20 billion budget gap in a Reuters poll. It brought the deficit for the first seven months of fiscal 2008 to a record $802.29 billion after a major positive accounting adjustment for the government's bailout investments.
Instead of following the previous practice of treating investments from the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Fund as cash outlays, the Obama administration has shifted to net present value accounting for them, a method that assumes that they have value that the government will one day recoup.
This change reduced the deficit for the first six months of fiscal 2009, which started in October, by about $175 billion, a Treasury official said.
Receipts for April, normally the year's biggest revenue month due to the deadline for federal income tax filing on April 15th, fell to $266.23 billion from $403.75 billion in April 2008.
But outlays set another April record, rising to $287.14 billion from $244.47 billion a year earlier.
Reuters