The federal government collected a record $2,121,987,000,000 in taxes for the first half of fiscal year 2022, according to the U.S. Treasury’s monthly statement.
The $2.1 trillion collected from October 2021 to March 2022 is the most the federal government has collected in the first half of a fiscal year and the first time government tax collections surpassed $2 trillion for that period. Before the first half of fiscal year 2022, the highest taxes ever collected during the first six months of a fiscal year came in fiscal year 2021, when the government collected $1,849,508,090,000 in taxes.
As CNS News explained, with historical dollar figures converted into constant March 2022 dollars using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator:
The record $2,121,987,000,000 in total taxes that the Treasury collected in the first half of this fiscal year included $1,124,485,000,000 in individual income taxes; $697,779,000,000 in social insurance and retirement taxes; $127,259,000,000 in corporation income taxes; $48,559,000,000 in customs duties; $38,712,000,000 in excise taxes; $14,275,000,000 in estate and gift taxes; and $70,917,000,000 in what the Treasury calls “miscellaneous receipts.”
Despite this massive tax collection, the federal government still ran a more than $600 million deficit. With government spending at $2,790,254,000,000 during the first six months of fiscal year 2022, the deficit reached $668,267,000,000.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services led all federal agency spending, coming in at $793,880,000,000. In second place was the Social Security Administration, which spent $622,933,000,000. Next was the Defense Department’s Military Programs, on which the federal government spent $358,398,000,000.