An arm of New Jersey's legislature
The Office of Legislative Services, projects that collections for the current fiscal year will be $217 million, or 0.7%, short of Christie's estimates. It also projects that for the coming fiscal year collections will be $309 million or 0.9% short of Christie's estimates.
The estimate for fiscal 2015, which starts on June 1, assumes that the legislature will pass various Christie-proposed tax initiatives yielding $240 million. It also assumes that the amounts that Christie has projected for the tax increases will be achieved.
In the current fiscal year, the office projects that the biggest shortfalls compared to Christie projections will be for $88 million in gross income tax revenue and $55 million in sales tax revenue.
In the next fiscal year the office projects that the biggest shortfalls would be for $113 million in gross income tax revenue and $104 million in sales tax revenue.
In recent years the Christie administration has had a history of overestimating tax revenues. This has forced the legislature to make mid-fiscal year budget adjustments.
According to the Pew Charitable Trust, after adjusting for inflation New Jersey's tax revenues are lagging behind the national total for the 50 states.
In the second quarter of 2013 the national total for state government revenues was up 0.5% compared to the pre-recession peak. By comparison, New Jersey revenues were still down 12.1% compared to its pre-recession peak.
Starting in December both Fitch Ratings and Moody's Investors Service have put negative outlooks on their ratings of New Jersey, which are AA-minus and Aa3, respectively.
