by Ryan McMaken
Mises.org
With April 15 come and gone, let’s have a look at how well the Federal government has been doing for itself in recent years.
It turns out things have been going quite well. In 2015, Federal receipts (well over 90 percent of which comes from taxes) hit an all time high of 3.2 trillion in 2009 dollars. In real terms, that’s the highest level ever reached.
Naturally, revenues dropped, when measured year over year, from 2008 to 2009 due to the recession at the time. However, revenue began to quickly grow again, and has now rebounded well above what it was at the end of the last cyclical peak. Receipts had peaked at 2.56 trillion (in 2009 dollars) in 2007.