Director Matthew Knittel provided a fiscal update for the state at a conference hosted by the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce.
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The Independent Fiscal Office submitted material to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees in advance of its scheduled budget hearings on Tuesday, February 20.
The hearings packet contains a brief background on the Independent Fiscal Office and its responsibilities, along with a list of the reports and analyses published since January 2017. It also provides data regarding the economic and revenue outlook, demographics, pensions, and natural gas.
In response to a legislative request, the IFO compiled certain data presented in the Governor’s Executive Budget for various years to produce a multi-year history of receipts and disbursements for selected special funds. The letter identifies certain special fund budgeting and reporting issues that should be considered when analyzing the data. The letter also provides computations for a potential budget increase factor based on the annual increases in population and the consumer price index.
This report uses the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Federation of Tax Administrators to facilitate a comparison of state and local tax systems across the fifty states. The report examines (1) the relative state and local tax burden across states, (2) the distribution of state and local taxes across revenue sources (e.g., income, sales and property) and (3) state debt levels.