The final step in the process is to review and audit the expenditures. .
Preparation of the budget begins in the spring of each year. Nine months before the budget is submitted, eighteen months before the start of the fiscal year and thirty months before the close of that fiscal year. An example of this would be, in the spring of 2003, most federal agencies were preparing their fiscal 2005 budgets, months before they had final figures for fiscal 2003 or appropriations for fiscal 2004. .
There are many rules that have been established over the years concerning the proper way to establish and enforce the budget. The budget and Accounting Act of 1921 provides the legal basis for the presidential budget system. The act made presidents responsible for the national budget by requiring them to prepare and submit revenue and spending estimates to congress each year. The act also established the Bureau of the Budget, now the Office of Management and Budget, to assist them in creating and implementing the budget. The basic framework of the budget process was enumerated from the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 which established the congressional budget process as the means by which Congress coordinates its various budget-related actions. The process is an annual concurrent resolution on the budget that sets total budget policies and efficient priorities for a multiyear period. The main purpose of the budget resolution is to establish the framework within which Congress considers separate revenue, spending, and other budget-related legislation. Revenue and spending amounts set in the budget resolution establish the basis for the enforcement of congressional budget policies through points of order. The budget resolution also initiates the reconciliation process for conforming existing revenue and spending laws to congressional budget policies. .
Revenue Legislation in Congress, as said in the Webster's Dictionary, is the yield of sources of income (as taxes) that a political unit (as a nation or state) collects and receives into the treasury for public use.
