(Read More: April Surplus Up, Year-to-Date Deficity Down: CBO)
The CBO said part of the increase was due to withholding (about $99 billion) as well as the higher payroll tax. But since the top one percent of earners pay more than 35 percent of the nation's federal income taxes, much of the increase was driven by top earners, especially those who shifted income into 2012 to avoid the tax hike in 2013.
The CBO said that non-withheld receipts (i.e., payments not directly from payroll withholding) surged by 30 percent, or $80 billion—much of that from "high earners" income shifting into 2013, the CBO said.
The CBO said that this income shifting was "substantially greater" than it expected. (See here for my "I told-you-so" where I predicted that the income shift by the wealthy was being overlooked by government forecasters.)
It's not just the federal government that's benefiting. Higher tax receipts from the wealthy have eased budget pressures in California, New York, and other high-tax states. California is on track to collect $4.5 billion more in personal income taxes than it projected after its recent tax hike, according to the state's Legislative Analyst's Office.
(Read More: 5 Fiscal Secrets Buried in Obama's Budget)
Overall state tax revenue on individual income was at $280.4 billion for 2012, up 8.1 percent from 2011.
Why is there so much money coming in from the wealthy? Higher rates are part of the reason. Yet the main driver is the economy and stock markets. The wealthy are back in boom times—and that's helping to bail out governments from the recession.