(CNSNews.com) - The federal government collected a record $4,045,979,000,000 in taxes in fiscal 2021, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement for September, which is the final month of the federal fiscal year.
Federal spending also hit a nominal high of $6,818,158,000,000 in fiscal 2021, up from the $6,551,872,000,000 that the federal government spent in fiscal 2020. However, when the $6,551,872,000,000 the federal government spent last year is adjusted for inflation from September 2020 dollars into September 2021 dollars it equals $6,905,040,760,000—thus, exceeding this fiscal year’s total of $6,818,158,000,000.
Before this year, the record for federal tax collections occurred in fiscal 2016, when the Treasury collected $3,711,701,940,000 in taxes in constant September 2021 dollars.
This year’s record federal tax collections of $4,045,979,000,000 included $2,044,377,000,000 in individual income taxes; $1,257,487,000,000 in payroll taxes; $79,985,000,000 in customs duties; $75,271,000,000 in excise taxes; $56,602,000,000 in unemployment insurance taxes; and $27,140 in estate and gift taxes.
Despite collecting record taxes in fiscal 2021, the federal government also ran a deficit of $2,772,179,000,000 for the fiscal year. That was the second highest deficit in the nation’s history, following the record deficit of $3,300,738,250,000 (in constant September 2021 dollars) that the Treasury ran in fiscal 2020.
2021 was the first fiscal year in the nation’s history when federal tax collections exceeded $4 trillion.
It was the second fiscal year in the nation’s history when spending exceeded $6 trillion.
Prior to fiscal 2020, when federal spending hit the record level of $6,905,040,760,000, the highest federal spending had ever gone in a fiscal year was in fiscal 2019, when it hit $4,446,611,000,000 in constant September 2021 dollars.
The Department of Health and Human Services spent $1,466,673,000,000 in fiscal 2021. The Social Security Administration spent $1,192,453,000,000. The Department of Defense spent $717,585,000,000.
(The historical dollar amounts in this story were adjusted to September 2021 dollars using the Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator.)
