Earnings death or taxes

``The government collected $36.1 billion in corporate taxes in the first quarter. That's down 31% from the first quarter of 2010. Wait a minute, I thought we were in a recovery. Standard and Poor's estimated that first-quarter earnings on the S&P 500 would be up 38% year over year. How can income-tax collections be down? These two numbers should not be going in opposite directions. One of them is actual, and one of them represents analysts' estimates. We know that analysts can be wrong. Could they be that wrong?... Having seen this data my bet would be that they miss in a big way. Maybe the market's reaction to Alcoa Inc.'s earnings is the first glimmer of recognition of what the tax data have been telling us.''