What is the Treasury General Account?

Drafted with AI assistance from official sources; checked against the sources listed below.

The Treasury General Account (TGA) is the US government's main bank account. It is held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Taxes, fees and the money raised at Treasury auctions go in; spending and the repayment of maturing securities go out. Its balance is Treasury's cash.

The balance on 30 September 2026

Treasury reports the balance every business day in Table I of the Daily Treasury Statement. On 30 September 2026, the last day of fiscal year 2026, the table read like this, in millions of dollars:

So Treasury ended the fiscal year with about $984 billion in cash. It had $890.8 billion when the year began on 1 October 2025, and $1,023.6 billion at the start of September 2026.

Why the balance swings so much

Billions of dollars move in and out every day, and the balance can rise or fall by $100 billion in a week. The big flows are predictable:

• Auction settlement days bring in cash from new bills, notes and bonds, and pay out the securities that mature the same day. Deposits and withdrawals on these days are the largest of the month.
• Tax dates raise the balance, above all mid-April, mid-June, mid-September and mid-January, when quarterly taxes are due.
• Benefit and payroll days, early in the month, lower it.

The yearly totals show how much passes through. In fiscal year 2026 the account took in $39.9 trillion and paid out $39.8 trillion. Most of that is the same money going round: the cash raised by selling new bills is used to repay the bills that mature, often within days. This is rollover, and the guide to the Treasury maturity wall explains it.

Treasury's cash and the debt limit

While the debt limit is in force, Treasury cannot borrow past it, so once its extraordinary measures run out, the cash in the TGA is what is left to pay the bills. Outside forecasters use the balance to estimate an X-date. The debt limit page shows the latest closing balance next to the room left under the limit, both from the same Daily Treasury Statement.

On 30 September 2026 the limit was in force with $1.12 trillion of room under it.

What the daily figure is, and is not

• It is the closing balance for the business day before publication. The statement for a Monday comes out on Tuesday afternoon.
• It is cash, not a budget figure. A day's deposits include borrowing, so a rising balance does not mean the government took in more than it spent.

What this guide cannot tell you

• Where the balance will be next week. Treasury publishes its own cash plans in its quarterly refunding documents; 500metrics does not forecast the balance.
• When an X-date would fall. Only Treasury and outside forecasters publish that, and the debt limit page shows such projections only with their publisher and date.