State revenues are projected to increase by $462 million this year and $460 million next year as Maine continues a stronger-than-expected economic recovery from the pandemic.
The state revenue forecasting committee is projecting state revenues are going to exceed where they were before the pandemic began. Associate Commissioner for Tax Policy, Mike Allen, says all the major revenue sources — income, sales and corporate taxes — are up over earlier projections by significant amounts.
“One of the reasons why things haven’t quite turned out the way we thought they would in the pandemic was because of the actions taken by the federal government and the federal reserve,” he says.
Congress passed trillions of dollars in relief programs from direct payments to taxpayers to expanded unemployment and business subsidy programs. The new projections indicate that when it's all said and done the state will have $83 million more this budget year than before the pandemic and $58 million more in the budget year that ends July 1, 2022.
