Federal Excise Tax Revenues

Federal excise taxes are imposed on the production or purchase of specific types of goods or services. In 2025, revenues from those taxes were $106 billion—which was about 2 percent of total federal revenues and 0.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Most revenues from federal excise taxes come from a few sources. In 2025, 88 percent of excise tax revenues came from highway taxes (largely taxes on fuel), taxes on tobacco and alcohol, aviation taxes, and the tax on corporate stock repurchases (or buybacks).1 The rest came from taxes on a diverse set of goods and economic activities.

About 70 percent of excise tax revenues are dedicated to trust funds and support specific categories of spending. For example, revenues from taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel are deposited into the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) and used to pay for highway infrastructure and transit projects. Revenues from excise taxes that are not dedicated to trust funds are deposited into the general fund of the Treasury.

In the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline projections (which estimate what federal revenues, outlays, deficits, and debt would be if current laws generally remained unchanged), excise taxes decline relative to the size of the economy, and as a share of revenues, from 2026 to 2036. That is mainly because some of the largest sources of excise tax revenues are taxes that are imposed per unit, and those taxes are not indexed for inflation (that is, adjusted to account for changes in prices).

CBO generally projects revenues from each excise tax separately. To do that, CBO examines the historical relationship between collections of revenues from an excise tax source and economic and market data about relevant economic activities. Those historical relationships and forecasts of economic variables are then used to project receipts from each excise tax source.2 Certain rules and conventions govern how the baseline projection of excise tax revenues is formulated. For example, by law, the agency is directed to assume that expiring taxes dedicated to trust funds are extended at their expiring rate for the remainder of the 10-year projection period.

In this report, CBO describes excise taxes, examines trends in excise tax revenues, and provides information about the models it uses for its baseline projections of excise tax revenues, which inform the agency’s projections of the balances of certain trust funds and its analysis of the distribution of federal taxes.

Revenues From Federal Excise Taxes

Excise taxes, which are imposed on the production or purchase of specific goods or services, are often structured either as a per-unit tax (for example, 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline) or as an ad valorem tax, assessed as a percentage of the value of an item, asset, or transaction (for example, 7.5 percent of the price of an airline ticket).3 Lawmakers determine through statute whether revenues from excise taxes are allocated to trust funds, thus providing a dedicated source of revenue for certain spending programs (such as highway funding), or are deposited into the Treasury’s general fund, which records revenues not earmarked by law for a specific purpose.

Historical Trends in Excise Tax Revenues

Excise tax revenues have generally declined as a share of federal tax revenues and relative to the size of the economy over time (see Figure 1). The share of total revenues attributable to excise taxes (currently about 2 percent) is lower than it was 30 years ago (when it totaled about 4 percent). That general downward trend partially reflects certain excise taxes’ not being adjusted for inflation. Policy changes also contribute to that general trend and help explain some of the year-to-year fluctuations in revenues.

Nonindexed Excise Taxes. The decline in federal excise tax revenues is partly because per-unit taxes on alcohol, fuel, and tobacco have not been indexed for inflation since they were set many years ago.4 Alcohol excise tax rates depend on the type of beverage and the quantity produced. Rates on production above certain thresholds have been in effect since 1991; those rates are based on volume, for beer; volume and alcohol content, for wine; and proof gallons (volume adjusted for alcohol content), for distilled spirits. For limited production quantities, producers face reduced rates and can receive certain credits. Those benefits were temporarily increased in 2017 and made permanent beginning in 2021, decreasing producers’ effective excise tax rates (or the per-unit tax actually paid after applying reduced rates and credits).

Excise tax rates on traditional motor fuels—18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon of diesel fuel—were set in 1993. And the excise tax on cigarettes has been $1.01 per pack since 2009. If those rates had been adjusted for inflation (as measured by the consumer price index for all urban consumers) from the time they were set, the per-gallon tax on motor fuels would be more than double its current rate and the tax per pack of cigarettes would be about 50 percent higher.

Revenues from excise taxes that are ad valorem (such as the 7.5 percent tax on the price of an airline ticket) tend to increase in nominal terms (or current dollars) over time as the size of the economy increases. An exception occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand for airline travel declined sharply. In 2020, certain aviation excise taxes were also suspended to aid the aviation industry.

Policy Changes. A range of policy changes help explain both general trends in historical excise tax revenues and annual fluctuations. An example is the telephone excise tax. In the early 2000s, that tax generated about 8 percent of total excise tax receipts. In 2006, that tax was terminated for long-distance and wireless telecommunications, and refunds were issued for taxes paid in the preceding three years. As a result of those refunds (which are recorded as negative receipts), excise tax revenues dropped substantially in 2007. Less than 1 percent of total excise tax revenues are now attributable to the telephone excise tax, which still applies to local telephone service.

In other cases, a policy change has had the opposite effect on excise taxes, boosting receipts. In 2010, for example, the downward trend in excise tax revenues reversed, partially because of an increase in the excise tax on cigarettes, which rose by 62 cents per pack in April 2009. As a result, revenues from excise taxes on tobacco in 2010 were more than twice what they had been in 2008.

At times, policy changes have caused excise tax revenues to fluctuate from year to year. The excise taxes and fees enacted in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010 elevated excise tax revenues in the second half of the 2010s. That effect was mostly attributable to the fee on health insurers (the largest of the ACA’s excise taxes and fees), which was imposed starting in calendar year 2014. Legislation was later enacted that suspended that fee for calendar year 2017, causing the resulting excise tax revenues to drop from $11 billion in 2016 to zero in 2017. Collections fluctuated in later years as fees were collected in 2018, suspended again in calendar year 2019, and then repealed after calendar year 2020.5

Changes in How Receipts Are Classified. Fluctuations in excise tax revenues in 2023 and 2024 stemmed from a onetime reclassification of receipts. In 2023, reported amounts of fuel tax refunds and credits began to sharply exceed historical amounts. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reported claims of fuel tax refunds and credits as reductions in excise tax receipts.6 Further review determined that those refunds and credits had instead reduced the amount collected in individual income tax receipts. In 2024, the IRS corrected the reporting of those refunds and credits. That reclassification increased excise tax revenues (and reduced individual income tax receipts) by $8.5 billion in 2024.7

Composition of Excise Tax Revenues in 2025

In 2025, about 70 percent of the $106 billion in excise tax revenues were dedicated to federal trust funds (see Figure 2). Those trust funds are an accounting mechanism used by the federal government to link dedicated collections, such as excise taxes, with expenditures for a specific purpose or program.8 Trust funds also have legal meaning in that their balances are a measure of the amounts that the government has the authority to spend for certain purposes under current law.9 Even though trust funds are accounted for separately, their revenues and expenditures are recorded in the federal budget alongside those of other government programs and directly contribute to the overall federal deficit or surplus. Excise tax revenues were credited to various trust funds in varying amounts in 2025:

• The Highway Trust Fund. Receipts credited to the HTF totaled $44 billion. In addition to the tax on gasoline, which generated $27 billion in receipts and was the largest single source of excise tax revenues, other sources of revenue for the HTF come from taxes on diesel and other fuels, as well as taxes on the sale of heavy-duty trucks and truck tires and the use of heavy vehicles.
• The Airport and Airway Trust Fund. Receipts credited to the Airport and Airway Trust Fund (AATF) totaled $23 billion. Most of the excise tax revenues deposited in that trust fund, $15 billion, came from taxes on domestic air travel. Other sources of excise tax revenues for the AATF are taxes on international flights, transportation of property and cargo, and aviation fuels.
• Other federal trust funds. Receipts credited to other federal trust funds totaled more than $6 billion and accounted for a small share of excise tax revenues (6 percent). Most of those taxes generated less than $1 billion in revenues, with two exceptions. The first exception is the annual fees imposed on manufacturers and importers of brand-name drugs. Those fees, which generated less than $3 billion in revenues in 2025, are deposited in the Part B account of the Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund. The second exception is the taxes on petroleum and certain chemicals, which generated less than $2 billion in revenues in 2025; those receipts are deposited into the Superfund Trust Fund.10

Receipts credited to the Treasury’s general fund totaled $33 billion in 2025. The excise taxes that generated the most revenues for the general fund were the taxes on tobacco (more than $9 billion), corporate stock repurchases (nearly $9 billion), and alcohol (about $8 billion).

Composition of Excise Tax Revenues Through 2036

Excise tax revenues rise from $108 billion in 2026 to $119 billion in 2036 in CBO’s baseline projections. As a share of GDP, those revenues are projected to decline over the period from 0.34 percent to 0.25 percent. That decline occurs because many excise taxes are imposed as a fixed (unindexed) dollar amount per unit sold and because the number of units sold is projected to either grow more slowly than the overall economy or decrease in coming years. Those factors also contribute to changes in the composition of excise tax revenues over the 10-year period (see Figure 3).

The most significant change driving that shift is the projected decline in revenues from excise taxes on tobacco. As a share of GDP, those receipts are projected to fall from 0.025 percent in 2026 to 0.007 percent in 2036. About 7 percent of excise tax revenues are projected to come from taxes on tobacco in 2026, and that number is expected to be less than 3 percent by 2036. The decline in receipts partially stems from the tax rate’s not being indexed for inflation and partially comes from a continuing drop in consumption of taxed tobacco products, particularly cigarettes. An additional factor pushing down those revenues is a court ruling allowing importers to claim drawbacks, or refunds, of taxes on products even when no tax was collected (see Box 1).

For certain other excise taxes, including taxes on domestic air travel, revenues as a share of GDP are expected to remain stable through 2036. Taxes on domestic air travel include the 7.5 percent ad valorem tax based on the ticket price and the domestic flight segment tax that is levied as a fixed dollar amount, adjusted annually for inflation, per flight segment. Because those taxes are levied as a percentage of the dollar value of transactions or adjusted for inflation, the receipts they generate increase as real economic activity (that is, economic activity adjusted to remove the effects of inflation) and prices rise. Because revenues from taxes on domestic air travel are projected to remain stable as a percentage of GDP, whereas revenues from other excise taxes are projected to fall as a percentage of GDP, the share of excise tax revenues coming from the taxes on domestic air passengers increases from 13 percent to 16 percent from 2026 to 2036.

The tax base for excise taxes has been expanded in recent years as new taxes have been imposed. A tax on corporate stock repurchases took effect in 2023, and a tax on certain remittance transfers started in 2026.11 As a result of those new taxes, total projected excise tax revenues are nearly 9 percent higher in 2026 and about 11 percent higher from 2027 to 2036 than total projected excise tax revenues would have been without those new taxes. Without those new sources of revenues, excise taxes as a share of GDP in 2036 would be 0.23 percent instead of the 0.25 percent that CBO projected in its February 2026 baseline.

Those changes in the composition of excise taxes alter the shares of excise tax revenues that are deposited into federal trust funds and the general fund. Over the next decade, the share of excise tax revenues dedicated to federal trust funds is expected to increase from 70 percent in 2026 to 77 percent by 2036. Correspondingly, the share of excise tax revenues dedicated to the general fund is projected to decrease from 30 percent to 23 percent over the 2026–2036 period, dragged down by declines in revenues from excise taxes on tobacco.

CBO’s Methods of Projecting Federal Excise Tax Revenues

The federal tax system is complicated by the large number of relatively small excise taxes, each with distinct tax bases, rates, exemptions, and administrative rules. Differences in statutory design and in the economic activities subject to taxation require separate processes to administer the taxes and enforce compliance. Because of those complexities, CBO uses distinct modeling approaches to produce revenue projections for the different taxes.

To project excise tax receipts, CBO generally estimates the total tax base for a given tax and then applies the relevant tax parameters to that base. To estimate the tax base, CBO uses economic data that relate to the specific good or service subject to taxation (for example, fuel consumption, alcohol consumption, or corporate stock repurchases). CBO’s excise tax projections are prepared in accordance with long-standing rules and conventions.12

Projections of excise tax revenues, like CBO’s projections of other types of revenue collections, are sensitive to CBO’s economic forecast. Even though the agency’s economic forecast is intended to fall in the middle of the range of likely outcomes for the economy, those projections are subject to considerable uncertainty. Uncertainty in CBO’s projections of excise taxes stems from several sources in addition to the economic forecast, including unanticipated changes in consumer habits and preferences, other uncertain market conditions, and policy uncertainty.

How Does CBO Project Revenues From Excise Taxes?

CBO generally projects revenues from each excise tax separately. In most cases, to do that CBO first examines the historical relationship between collections of revenues from that excise tax source and economic and market data about relevant economic activities. CBO then uses those historical relationships and forecasts of economic variables, along with tax parameters, to project revenues. The agency continually evaluates how relevant variables influence projections and updates those relationships as necessary.

Historical data about collections of excise taxes for specific goods and services come from agencies within the Department of the Treasury. CBO receives quarterly data from the Internal Revenue Service about collections of excise taxes reported to that bureau.13 CBO also relies on quarterly data about collections from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.14

To project total excise tax revenues, CBO aggregates the projected revenues for separate excise taxes. The agency also reviews the Monthly Treasury Statement (MTS), which provides timely information about total excise tax payments received by the Treasury. (Those payments are not allocated to specific excise taxes.)15 CBO’s projections of aggregate excise tax receipts are aligned with the total amount reported on the MTS for the most recent year. Projected excise tax receipts sometimes differ from the amount reported on the MTS for reasons that are unknown. In those cases, that discrepancy is treated as dissipating gradually over the course of the projection period.16

Economic Drivers of Excise Tax Projections. The economic drivers of revenues vary among different excise taxes. For example:

• Projections of revenues from gasoline taxes rely on recent data about gasoline tax receipts and projections of taxable fuel consumption. In CBO’s projections, that consumption depends on the agency’s projections of GDP, the relative price of nondurable energy goods (reflecting gasoline prices), and the fuel efficiency of vehicles.17 Vehicles’ fuel efficiency has historically been influenced by regulatory policies (see Box 2).
• Projections of revenues from excise taxes on domestic air passengers rely on recent data about aviation excise tax receipts and expectations about future demand for airline travel. In CBO’s projections, that demand depends on the agency’s projections of GDP. Aviation excise taxes include ad valorem taxes alongside flat fees that are indexed for inflation. Because a portion of aviation excise taxes are adjusted for inflation, the projected receipts from excise taxes on domestic air passengers also depend on CBO’s projections of inflation.
• Projections of revenues from excise taxes on alcohol rely on data about collections and estimates of consumption per person. In CBO’s projections, future consumption depends on anticipated trends in consumption per person and the agency’s forecast of the adult population. Estimates of revenues from excise taxes on alcohol are adjusted to reflect the effects of drawbacks of excise taxes paid on certain imported goods (see Box 1).

Revenue projections for certain other excise taxes rely on CBO’s forecasts of specific economic series. For example, projections of revenues from the excise taxes on petroleum rely on projections of oil production and imports. Projections of revenues from the excise tax on college and university endowment income rely on forecasts of investment income. And projections of revenues from the excise tax on corporate stock repurchases rely on forecasted corporate income. Revenues from other excise taxes, particularly those that raise smaller amounts of revenue, are expected to grow in line with recent historical trends or grow with the economy in CBO’s projections.

CBO also relies on data from external sources when projecting excise tax receipts. For example, the agency uses projections of coal production from the Energy Information Administration in its projections of revenues from excise taxes on coal that fund the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund.

Incorporating Timing Adjustments. CBO’s projections address known timing issues that can cause excise tax receipts to fluctuate. Timing issues can arise when the last day of a fiscal year falls on a weekend, for example. That concern is particularly applicable to the agency’s projections of the fee collected from manufacturers and importers of brand-name drugs. The fee is administered by the IRS and treated as an excise tax for collection purposes, and the aggregate amount allocated among covered entities is set at $2.8 billion per year. Payments are generally due on September 30. When that date falls on a weekend, receipts are recorded in October and thus shifted into the next fiscal year. Because of that timing shift, the amount collected is higher or lower than $2.8 billion in certain years.

Timing issues are also reflected in the agency’s projections of receipts from the excise tax on corporate stock repurchases. Corporations pay the tax on net stock repurchases made during their taxable year, which does not always align with the calendar year. In projecting receipts by fiscal year, CBO accounts for variation in corporations’ taxable years and the resulting differences in the timing of payments made to the Treasury.

Rules and Conventions That Apply to CBO’s Excise Tax Projections

Excise tax revenues are a component of CBO’s baseline revenue projections. Therefore, the laws, principles, and rules that govern how the baseline is formulated apply to CBO’s excise tax projections.18 Three aspects of the baseline methodology are particularly important in developing excise tax projections.

• When dedicated to trust funds, excise taxes that are scheduled to expire are extended in CBO’s baseline projections. By law, CBO is directed to assume that expiring taxes dedicated to trust funds are extended at their expiring rate for the remainder of the 10-year projection period.19 This rule is an exception to the general rule requiring that CBO’s baseline projections reflect current law, including any scheduled expiration, for most tax provisions. Over the current projection period, which covers 2027 to 2036, revenues from excise taxes that are assumed to be extended after their scheduled expiration are projected to total $546 billion, or about half of total projected revenues from excise taxes. Most of that amount is attributable to taxes on motor fuels (mainly gasoline and diesel), as well as aviation-related excise taxes, all of which are extended at their current rates after their scheduled expiration (or scheduled rate reduction) on September 30, 2028.20
• When legislation enacts, repeals, or modifies excise taxes, the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate how that change will affect federal revenues. That estimated change in revenues is then reflected in CBO’s next update to its baseline revenue projections. For example, CBO’s February 2026 excise tax baseline reflects the amount of revenue JCT estimated would be collected under the new excise tax on remittance transfers—a 1 percent tax on cross-border money transfers sent from the United States to recipients abroad—included in the 2025 reconciliation act (Public Law 119-21). The amount CBO incorporated in its excise tax baseline reflected the gross increase in excise tax collections before accounting for the offset for income and payroll taxes that was included in JCT’s original estimate (discussed next). In its future baseline projections of revenues from the excise tax on remittance transfers, CBO will reflect any newly available data and other information that was not available when JCT prepared its initial estimates of the effects of the 2025 reconciliation act.
• CBO and JCT apply an income and payroll tax offset when estimating the net revenues arising from legislative changes to excise taxes. Excise taxes reduce the revenues derived from individual and corporate income taxes and payroll taxes because they reduce the income of workers and firms. Thus, when new excise taxes are imposed or existing excise taxes are modified, the net effect on revenues from that change will be smaller than the gross change in the amount of revenue collected from the excise tax.21 (Because of the offset, the net amount is usually about three-quarters of the gross amount.) Projected revenues from specific excise taxes in CBO’s baseline projections reflect the gross amounts. For most excise taxes dedicated to federal trust funds, the amount transferred to the trust fund is the gross amount collected from the tax.22 Imposing a new excise tax or increasing an existing excise tax decreases the amount of revenue that is expected to be collected from income and payroll taxes in CBO’s baseline projections.

How Are Federal Excise Tax Revenues Reflected in Other CBO Analyses?

Actual and projected excise tax revenues inform analyses beyond CBO’s baseline revenue projections. Because many excise taxes are dedicated to specific trust funds, those projections affect the funds’ estimated balances. In addition, because households bear the cost of excise taxes through their consumption of taxed goods and services, changes in the level and composition of excise taxes matter for CBO’s analyses of the distribution of federal taxes.

Trust Fund Projections

For trust funds financed with excise taxes, CBO’s projections of trust fund balances depend on its projections of excise tax receipts (as well as projections of outlays). The Airport and Airway Trust Fund, for example, is projected to receive $260 billion in excise tax revenues from 2027 to 2036. The fund’s receipts are projected to be greater than its outlays in every year of the projection period.23 (Those amounts are calculated using CBO’s baseline assumptions for discretionary spending.) The positive balance in the AATF is expected to increase over time.

The Highway Trust Fund is projected to receive $503 billion in excise tax revenues from 2027 to 2036. Outlays from the HTF have exceeded receipts dedicated to that fund since 2008, leading lawmakers to authorize transfers to the HTF from the general fund of the Treasury to avoid delaying payments to state and local governments. CBO’s projections of the balance of the HTF reflect prior transfers to the fund but do not presume any future transfers will be made. In CBO’s most recent baseline projections, the fund’s balance is expected to be exhausted in 2028.24

The operational mechanics of how excise tax receipts are transferred to trust funds have implications for budgetary outcomes. When taxpayers make excise tax payments, those amounts are deposited into the general fund and are not differentiated among specific excise taxes. For most excise taxes, payments are due semimonthly.25 There is a lag between when those payments are made and when the IRS processes excise tax returns and certifies actual amounts collected for specific taxes. (That certification occurs quarterly.) Because of that lag, which can span several months, amounts initially deposited into trust funds are based on estimated collections rather than actual collections. The Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service makes monthly (or other periodic) transfers to trust funds using estimates of tax liabilities prepared by the Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis. Later, once actual collections are known and have been certified, the Bureau of the Fiscal Service makes a balancing transfer (or reconciling adjustment) to correct for any difference between estimated amounts and actual collections.

Large balancing transfers can cause fluctuations in excise tax deposits to trust fund accounts even if actual collections are relatively stable. In July 2025, for example, net tax receipts deposited into the Highway Trust Fund (and reported on the Monthly Treasury Statement) were less than one-tenth of the amount typically deposited. That was because of a reconciling adjustment made that month to correct for estimated taxes paid in the last three months of calendar year 2024 that exceeded actual collections. CBO does not estimate adjustments made to reconcile the amounts in trust funds.

Distributional Analyses

CBO’s distributional analyses allocate excise taxes to households in two ways. Excise taxes on goods and services are allocated to households according to their consumption of those items. Excise taxes on intermediate goods, which are paid by businesses, are allocated to households in proportion to their overall consumption.

In its most recent analysis of the distribution of household income, CBO found that excise taxes are regressive. The amount of excise taxes paid relative to income is greatest for lower-income households, which tend to spend a larger share of their income on taxed goods and services. In 2022 (the most recent year for which comprehensive data are available), the average excise tax rate was 1.3 percent for households in the lowest one-fifth (or quintile) of the population, compared with 0.6 percent for households in the middle quintile and 0.3 percent for households in the highest quintile.26

Anticipated changes in the composition of excise tax receipts are expected to have distributional implications. Consistent with the expected decrease in excise taxes relative to GDP, the average excise tax rate is expected to decline for all income groups. The decrease is expected to be larger, in percentage terms, for lower-income groups. As a result, excise taxes are expected to be less regressive by 2036 than they are in 2026. One reason for that change is the projected decline in excise tax revenues from tobacco. Tobacco taxes are regressive because the amount paid in tobacco excise taxes relative to income is greatest for lower-income households.

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1. 1. Stock repurchases, or buybacks, occur when a public company buys shares of its own stock.

2. 2. Revenues are cash inflows (receipts) to the federal government that are collected from the public and arise from the government’s exercise of its ability to compel payment by law. When referring to excise tax collections, revenues and receipts are treated as synonyms.

3. 3. For ad valorem excise taxes, the taxable value for goods sold at retail is the purchase price. For manufacturer excise taxes, it is the sales price. When taxable goods are not sold to an independent buyer at a market price, a constructive sale price (a value set by tax authorities) applies instead.

4. 4. For information about the budgetary effects of policies that would increase excise taxes on alcohol and motor fuels and index them for inflation, see Options 69 and 71 in Congressional Budget Office, Options for Reducing the Deficit: 2025 to 2034 (December 2024), www.cbo.gov/publication/60557.

5. 5. Fees on manufacturers and importers of brand-name drugs, also enacted in the ACA, have boosted excise tax receipts since 2011. That effect has been small, though, accounting for less than 5 percent of total excise tax receipts in each year.

6. 6. Congressional Budget Office, Answers to Questions for the Record Following a Hearing on The Budget And Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034 (March 2024), pp. 1–2, www.cbo.gov/publication/60033.

7. 7. That reclassification was reported in Congressional Budget Office, Monthly Budget Review: August 2024 (September 2024), p. 4, www.cbo.gov/publication/60592.

8. 8. Government Accountability Office, Federal Trust Funds and Other Dedicated Funds: Fiscal Sustainability Is a Growing Concern for Some Key Funds, GAO-20-156 (January 2020), www.gao.gov/assets/gao-20-156.pdf.

9. 9. Congressional Budget Office, The Outlook for Major Federal Trust Funds: 2020 to 2030 (September 2020), www.cbo.gov/publication/56523.

10. 10. Officially called the Hazardous Substance Superfund, the Superfund Trust Fund uses excise tax receipts as well as revenues from other sources to finance the Superfund program, which is responsible for cleaning up hazardous waste sites.

11. 11. Other excise taxes were imposed on new tax bases over the past decade. Beginning in calendar year 2018, two new excise taxes were imposed on tax-exempt entities. First, private colleges and universities with large endowments were subject to an excise tax on net investment income from their endowments. Second, tax-exempt entities were subject to an excise tax on excess executive compensation (generally remuneration in excess of $1 million annually). Additionally, excise taxes on certain chemicals and petroleum were reinstated in 2022 (for chemicals) and 2023 (for petroleum). Those taxes, which provide revenues for the Superfund Trust Fund, had expired after 1995.

12. 12. Congressional Budget Office, CBO Explains How It Develops the Budget Baseline (April 2023), www.cbo.gov/publication/58916.

13. 13. Data about annual collections are publicly available. See Internal Revenue Service, Statistics of Income Tax Statistics, “SOI Bulletin Historical Table 20,” www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-historical-table-20.

14. 14. For quarterly collections, see Department of the Treasury, Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, “Tax Collection Activities by Fiscal Year, “ www.ttb.gov/taxes/tax-audit/tax-collections.

15. 15. The amount reported as excise tax receipts on the MTS reflects excise tax collections after reductions for refunds and nonrefundable credits (which reduce the amount paid with tax returns) and various adjustments and reclassifications (including timing adjustments, prior-period corrections, and shifts of receipts among categories). To access those statements, see Department of the Treasury, “Monthly Treasury Statement (MTS),” https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/monthly-treasury-statement/.

16. 16. Congressional Budget Office, CBO Explains How It Develops the Budget Baseline (April 2023), www.cbo.gov/publication/58916.

17. 17. CBO projects a price index for nondurable energy goods (or simply energy goods) as part of the agency’s projections of inflation. That category consists mainly of gasoline, along with other fuels, lubricants, and other fluids used mostly for motor vehicles. See Chandler Lester, How CBO Projects Inflation (Congressional Budget Office Working Paper 2024-01, February 2024), www.cbo.gov/publication/59877.

18. 18. Congressional Budget Office, CBO Explains How It Develops the Budget Baseline (April 2023), www.cbo.gov/publication/58916; and CBO Explains the Statutory Foundations of Its Budget Baseline (May 2023), www.cbo.gov/publication/58955.

19. 19. See section 257 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.

20. 20. The excise tax on oil that finances the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund (OSLTF) expired on December 31, 2025. Because revenues from that excise tax are dedicated to a trust fund, CBO’s February 2026 baseline projections (which were completed before that expiration date) reflect the assumption that the OSLTF excise tax is extended.

21. 21. Congressional Budget Office, CBO’s Use of the Income and Payroll Tax Offset in Its Budget Projections and Cost Estimates (October 2022), www.cbo.gov/publication/58421.

22. 22. An exception is the Vaccine Injury Compensation Trust Fund, which receives deposits of net revenues from the tax on certain vaccines.

23. 23. Congressional Budget Office, “Baseline Projections: Airport and Airway Trust Fund” (February 2026), https://tinyurl.com/csbd73sc.

24. 24. Congressional Budget Office, “Baseline Projections: Highway Trust Fund Accounts” (February 2026), https://tinyurl.com/3bb2djbx. In June, CBO released projections of the HTF accounts that update the February 2026 baseline to reflect appropriations provided after that baseline was published. Those projections also reflect a 2028 exhaustion date. See Congressional Budget Office, “Baseline Projections: Highway Trust Fund Accounts” (June 2026), https://tinyurl.com/mperpbwc.

25. 25. One exception to the semimonthly deposit requirement is the tax on corporate stock repurchases; payment for that tax is due annually. Another exception is for taxpayers owing less than $2,500 in quarterly excise taxes.

26. 26. The average federal excise tax rate is calculated by dividing total federal excise taxes for an income group by that group’s total income before transfers and taxes. See Congressional Budget Office, The Distribution of Household Income, 2022 (January 2026), www.cbo.gov/publication/61911.