During the February 23rd Executive Appropriations Committee (EAC) meeting, updated revenue estimates for the upcoming fiscal year of 2025 were released.
This is a critical number for setting the upcoming agenda for tax policy. While the Legislature sets the spending levels for the upcoming fiscal year of 2025 during the legislative session, these revenue estimates start revealing the amount of headroom elected officials will have as far as a budget surplus or shortfall.
The 2025 fiscal year revenue estimate for the General Fund/Income Tax Fund has been raised to $11,845,556,000 from the previous amount of $11,484,875,000. That is an increase of $225,078,000 over the previous estimates.
From an early look at the final budget it appears, under the leadership of Speaker of the House Mike Schultz and Senate President Stuart Adams, the Legislature has managed to pull back government spending growth this year. This is critically important, especially when it comes to “ongoing” spending by the state government. Ongoing spending repeats every year unless eliminated and can be a major driver in putting pressure on raising taxes. From early indications, it appears that the ongoing budget only grew by a small amount this session.
If this is the case, that could pave the way for another round of income tax cuts. That has your Utah Taxpayers Association smiling.