Income Tax Receipts Rose $189 Billion in Fiscal 2026, Corporate Fell $71 Billion. Paychecks Explain 57 Percent

Individual income taxes raised $2,845.5 billion in fiscal 2026, up $189.5 billion from a year earlier, and corporate income taxes raised $381.4 billion, down $70.7 billion, according to Treasury's September Monthly Treasury Statement. A top post on r/business this week framed that as workers paying $189 billion more while corporations paid $71 billion less. The totals match the Treasury table. The word "workers" covers only part of the individual increase.

Where the $189 billion came from

Treasury splits individual income tax into two buckets. Withheld taxes, the money employers send in from paychecks, reached $2,027.1 billion, up $107.6 billion or 5.6 percent. Everything else, which includes estimated quarterly payments and final payments made with returns, reached $1,159.7 billion, up $95.8 billion or 9.0 percent. Refunds grew $14.0 billion to $341.3 billion and trimmed the net.

Withholding therefore supplied about 57 percent of the net increase. The Congressional Budget Office lists what sat in the other bucket: final payments of 2024 taxes made after the typical filing season, estimated and final payments of 2025 taxes, and estimated taxes for 2026. Treasury's table does not say who made those payments. People with business or investment income typically pay through estimated taxes, but the table cannot confirm that split.

Jordan Haring, director of fiscal policy at the American Action Forum, attributed the individual increase to higher wages and salaries in an October 8 note on the CBO review. The Treasury table supports that for withholding. It leaves the other $96 billion with payments it does not trace to wages.

Corporate receipts: fewer payments in, more refunds out

Corporate gross receipts were $442.9 billion, down $43.5 billion or 8.9 percent from $486.4 billion. Corporate refunds were $61.5 billion, up $27.2 billion from $34.3 billion, a rise of 79 percent. Net receipts fell to $381.4 billion from $452.1 billion. The gross and refund changes are calculated from Treasury's Table 4.

CBO's explanation is the 2025 reconciliation act, which "allows corporations to take larger deductions for certain investments." Those deductions reduce some payments and offset increases that rising corporate income would otherwise have produced, CBO wrote. Expensing rules move deductions earlier in an asset's life. The total deduction does not change, so a smaller bill now generally means a larger one later, depending on how much companies keep investing. That is how expensing works in general, not a CBO finding.

The sources reviewed for this piece do not include the law's backers arguing that the deductions drive new investment, so that side is not tested here. Treasury's table contains no investment data either.

One number cuts against a steady slide. CBO estimates September corporate collections were $25 billion, or 39 percent, larger than in September 2025, and Treasury's table shows $86.6 billion in net corporate receipts that month. CBO's review gives no reason for the September jump in the text.

Who funds the government now

Individuals supplied 52.7 percent of total receipts in fiscal 2026, up from 50.7 percent. Corporations supplied 7.1 percent, down from 8.6 percent. Total receipts rose $168.7 billion, or 3.2 percent, to $5,403.3 billion. The shares are calculated from Treasury's Table 3.

A third line changed the arithmetic. Customs duties net of refunds fell to $173.2 billion from $194.9 billion. Gross customs collections rose to $317.8 billion from $202.4 billion, but refunds jumped to $144.6 billion from $7.5 billion. CBO ties the refunds to tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, after a February 2026 Supreme Court decision, and estimates about $130 billion of fiscal 2026 refunds were for those tariffs. Treasury's figure covers all customs refunds, which is why the two numbers differ.

The revenue gain did not close the gap. CBO puts the fiscal 2026 deficit at $2.0 trillion, $218 billion more than in fiscal 2025, because outlays rose an estimated $386 billion, or 6 percent, while revenues rose $169 billion, or 3 percent.

What the numbers cannot show

These are cash receipts for one fiscal year. They show when money reached Treasury, not which tax year it belongs to, and this piece compares only against fiscal 2025. It does not have the longer series needed to say whether a 16 percent corporate drop is unusual outside recession years. The CBO and Treasury figures also draw on one set of Treasury cash records, so they are two views of the same data rather than independent counts.

If individual receipts keep rising with wages and corporate receipts stay lower, the split in Treasury's table will keep moving the same direction. If companies stop investing at the current pace, the deductions shrink and the corporate line would be expected to recover. That is a forecast from how expensing works, not a released data point.