Matthew C Klein, Columnist

Here Is Some Enriching Tax Data

The U.S. Treasury is collecting more in taxes than ever, a sing of the economy's strength.

April 7, 2014 at 12:03 PM UTC

Matthew C. Klein writes for Bloomberg View about the economy and financial markets. He previously wrote for the Economist magazine and its economics blog, Free Exchange. Before that, Klein was a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he spent more than two years studying the history of the Federal Reserve and the intellectual history of monetary economics for an upcoming book by Sebastian Mallaby. He also worked at Bridgewater Associates, where he studied the economies of Central and Eastern Europe and advised institutional investors on asset-liability management. Klein has a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University. Originally from Chicago, he lives in New York.

Never have so many wasted so much time. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

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Tax day is almost here, which makes this a good time to look at what the U.S. Treasury's daily tax data tell us about the state of the economy. When the private sector is doing well, the government ends up taking in more money, as it is now. During recessions, fewer people are earning incomes and collecting capital gains, so tax revenue falls.

Making sense of the numbers takes some effort. The government collects taxes every business day but the distribution is very uneven during the course of the year, or even during a single month.