The extraordinary rise in receipts over the past decade resulted from the exceptional performance of the U.S. economy and the associated rise in the market value of assets, which helped lift receipts from 17-1/2 percent of GDP in fiscal year 1992 to a postwar high of nearly 21 percent of GDP in fiscal 2000.
The increase in receipts in the second half of the 1990s was particularly impressive--especially for individual income taxes, which grew about 11 percent per year, on average, between 1995 and 2000.