The bad news for state budgets this year continues, with a new survey of 42 states finding that tax collections for the July-through-September quarter were essentially flat, compared with the same period last year.

Accounting for an inflation rate of 2.7 percent, state tax revenues actually declined by 2.6 percent, according to a report on the survey, which was conducted by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the policy-research arm of the State University of New York.

The news is unlikely to get better anytime soon, the report’s authors say. “We expect revenue collections to deteriorate further in coming quarters and believe they are likely to be down substantially when income-tax returns are filed in the April-June quarter of 2009,” said Donald J. Boyd, a senior fellow at the institute, in a news release.

Already, 27 states have estimated budget shortfalls totaling more than $12-billion for the current fiscal year, according to the Center on Budget Policies and Priorities. —Eric Kelderman