Philadelphia’s largest tax streams—Wage and Earnings and Real Estate—are forecasted with high accuracy, typically within three percent of actual results. In contrast, smaller and more volatile revenue sources like the Realty Transfer and Amusement Taxes show far greater forecasting errors, reflecting their sensitivity to economic shifts and one-off events. By comparing 21 years of projections…

PICA’s Revenue Prediction Precision issue brief analyzes Philadelphia’s accuracy in forecasting revenues compared to 11 peer cities, finding that the City is among the most precise, with a mean error of ±4.0%.