The U.S. government posted its widest budget surplus in five years in April, swelled by stronger individual and corporate income-tax receipts.

The surplus for the month when tax payments are due increased to $112.9 billion, the biggest since April 2008, from $59.1 billion a year earlier, the Treasury said in its monthly budget statement Friday in Washington. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of 24 economists was for an April surplus of $112 billion.

A strengthening economy is helping narrow a U.S. fiscal deficit that has exceeded $1 trillion in each of the past four years and pushed the Treasury Department near its legal borrowing limit. U.S. employers added 1.4 million workers in the October-April period, boosting government revenue and reducing the need to sell debt.

"This receipts surge has bought the Treasury a lot of time to stay under the debt limit," said Mike Englund, chief economist at Action Economics in Boulder, Colo.

For the first seven months of the 2013 financial year that began Oct. 1, the deficit shrank 32 percent to $487.6 billion from the same period from a year before.

The report showed revenue rose 28 percent in April from the same month a year earlier, to $406.7 billion. Spending increased 13 percent to $293.8 billion. President Obama in February signed legislation suspending the $16.4 trillion debt limit through May 18. A later deadline would give Congress more time to debate the ceiling. The debt limit will increase on May 19 to account for the deficits that accrued during the suspension period. The Treasury will then have to use its extraordinary measures to extend its borrowing authority and keep paying bills, unless the limit is raised or suspended again.

Bloomberg News