Abstract:
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The State Finance and Tax Statistics Branch conducts the Quarterly Summary of State and Local Government Tax Revenue (QTax). The QTax survey is comprised of local property tax, state taxes, and local nonproperty taxes. In this paper, we describe the investigation into whether the Public Sector Quarterly Tax (QTax) time series are good candidates for seasonal adjustment. We review the four QTax item codes: Sales Tax (T09), Income Tax (T40), Corporate Income Tax (T41), and Property Tax (T01) at the National, State, and local levels, to determine whether seasonal adjustment helps to interpret series changes that occur over time. We make these adjustments by using the seasonal adjustment software X-13ARIMA-SEATS. With this software, we employ the semiparametric X-11 method and the model-based SEATS method, and compare results and adjustment quality. We also consider whether to adjust the National series directly or indirectly. We undertook the research knowing that the adjustments would be additional information that we could provide to data users, not replacing the current data products.
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