A statement of a government's planned or expected financial position for a specified period of time (usually one year) based on estimates of the expenditures to be made by the government's main subdivisions (wages and salaries of government employees; consultants' fees; purchases of equipment, supplies, real estate, etc.; money transferred to beneficiaries of various programs, and so on) during the specified period, along with estimates of the revenues to be realized from the various sources of income that will be available for paying for these expenditures. The budget of a government may be seen as a comprehensive plan of what the government will spend for its various programs during the next fiscal year and how it expects to raise the money to pay for them (tax receipts, charges for services, sale of assets, borrowing, new emissions of currency, etc.) Somewhat confusingly, the same term is used to denote both the advance estimate or plan of what the government will be taking in and spending and also the actual amounts that finally end up being taken in and spent -- even though the planned and actual numbers never really match perfectly when the returns come in!

[See also: budget deficit, budget surplus, fiscal policy]