FYI: Throughout the late 1990s, states’ revenues swelled thanks to their celebrated “April surprises”–in which money from personal income taxes kept catapulting upward. During the second quarter of 2000, states took in a collective 20 percent more in income taxes than they had the year before. But, as a new Rockefeller Institute brief dramatically illustrates, the April surprise is no longer welcome. New York’s income tax collections plummeted 14.3 percent between 2001 and 2002, making it one of six states (all but one, California, are in the Northeast) that beat the national average of a 12 percent drop. [4/24/03]