Monthly Treasury Statement (MTS)

Total Public Debt Outstanding Disclaimer

There are six datasets on Fiscal Data which include the national debt, which is referred to as Total Public Debt Outstanding (TPDO). TPDO is the sum of Debt Held by the Public and Intragovernmental (Intragov) Holdings. Some datasets include debt issued by the Federal Financing Bank (FFB). The datasets listed below only include debt issued by the Treasury Department. The list below provides information on where there are differences in debt calculations related to the national debt.

Debt to the Penny contains TPDO, as well as a breakout of Debt Held by the Public and Intragov Holdings. In this dataset, Intragov Holdings includes debt issued by the FFB.

Historical Debt Outstanding contains TPDO, but no breakout of Debt Held by the Public and Intragov Holdings. In this dataset, TPDO includes debt issued by the FFB.

Daily Treasury Statement (DTS) contains Debt Held by the Public and Intragov Holdings, but does not aggregate these two categories into TPDO. In this dataset, Intragov Holdings includes debt issued by the FFB. Dollar values for Debt Held by the Public and Intragov Holdings are rounded in millions to cohere with other data in the dataset. Please note that the published reports on the Fiscal Service site contain TPDO values.

Monthly Treasury Statement (MTS) contains TPDO, as well as a breakout of Debt Held by the Public and Intragov Holdings. In this dataset, Intragov Holdings includes debt issued by the FFB.

Monthly Statement of the Public Debt (MSPD) contains TPDO, as well as a breakout of Debt Held by the Public and Intragov Holdings. In this dataset, Intragov Holdings includes debt issued by the FFB. Dollar values are rounded in millions to cohere with other data in the dataset.

Schedules of Federal Debt contains Debt Held by the Public and Intragov Holdings, but does not aggregate these two categories into TPDO. In this dataset, Intragov Holdings do not include debt issued by the FFB. Dollar values are rounded in millions to cohere with other data in the dataset.

End Total Public Debt Outstanding Disclaimer

MTS datasets include total and subtotal rows that should be excluded when aggregating data. Some rows represent elements of a given dataset's hierarchy, but are not assigned values. The classification_id for each of these elements can be used as the parent_id for underlying data elements to calculate their implied values. Subtotal rows will often be available to access this same information.

Money flowing into the Treasury is known as receipts, and money flowing out is known as outlays. A surplus occurs if the total value of receipts exceeds the value of outlays, and a deficit occurs when the value of outlays exceeds the value of receipts. All values are reported in millions of U.S. dollars. Some columns in this dataset overlap with the Historical Debt Outstanding, Daily Treasury Statement (DTS), Schedules of Federal Debt, Interest Expense on the Debt Outstanding, and Debt to the Penny datasets.

Debt issued by the Federal Financing Bank is included in the intragovernmental holdings on the MTS, but not in the Schedules of Federal Debt because it is not debt managed by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. The difference between these datasets is equal to the amount of the Federal Financing Bank amount. The MTS only reports interest that has been paid out of the Treasury Account Symbol 20X0550 - Interest on the Public Debt. This does not align with the Total Interest on the Public Debt in the Interest Expense on the Public Debt Outstanding dataset because it does not include the restoration of foregone interest due to the Debt Issuance Suspension Period.

When payments of individual income and Social Security and Medicare taxes are made, the taxpayer makes a single, combined payment and does not report the amounts attributable to each tax. Thus, the MTS reports Social Security and Medicare taxes as estimated amounts and reports individual income taxes as the residual of the combined payments minus the Social Security and Medicare estimated amounts. When the actual amounts of Social Security and Medicare taxes are determined, the MTS reflects the difference between the initial estimates and the actual amounts as an adjustment for prior years' taxes with an offsetting adjustment to individual income taxes. In Fiscal Year 2020, estimates of Social Security and Medicare taxes were made prior to the onset of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

Downloaded CSV files with values greater than $10 trillion may have the final two digits (cents) excluded due to digit limits enforced by the application used to access the file. The JSON and XML file downloads are not impacted by this limitation.

Total Public Debt Outstanding = Debt Held by the Public + Intragovernmental Holdings

Please note that Total Public Debt Outstanding may be calculated differently within different datasets. See those datasets Notes & Known Limitations section for more details.

Note on Published Reports: Most copies are from the Treasury Library collection with the help from Stanford University Libraries collection and Google Books.