Income Tax Receipts Run Below Estimates : Revenue: Projections may be off by $500 million. Shortfall could bring deep cuts in state programs.

With budget estimates already off by $153 million through March, state officials had been hoping April personal income tax returns would bring some good news. But, with most of the returns counted, it looks like more bad news.

Steve Larson, director of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, said he has been told 1989 tax returns could be nearly $500 million below budget predictions.

That would put estimates that Gov. George Deukmejian used in his proposed $53.7-billion budget off by $640 million--a sum that could require deep cuts in state programs.

The shortfall has not officially been recognized by Deukmejian and the state Department of Finance, which is responsible for the official revenue estimates used in the budget. The governor and his financial advisers will not release their official budget numbers until May.

Until Tuesday’s disclosure that income tax receipts were off, the downturn in tax revenues has been blamed on a decline in business profits that has pushed down bank and corporation taxes.

Even before the shortages in tax collections began showing up, legislative budget writers were complaining that the governor’s budget would need another $1.9 billion to keep up with all the services the state provides.

Deukmejian proposed bridging the gap by freezing grants to welfare and other aid recipients, suspending legally required budget increases to doctors, hospitals and other providers of medical services to the poor, and slashing state aid to counties.

One immediate effect of the shortfall is that it likely would increase pressure in the Legislature for a tax increase.

Deukmejian, who will leave office when he completes his second term at the end of this year, has rejected any talk of a general tax increase to make up the difference. He is supporting Proposition 111 in the June 5 primary balloting, which would produce an immediate increase of 5-cents-a-gallon in the gasoline tax--but that money is earmarked for transportation programs.

Proposition 111 would also adjust the voter-approved constitutional spending limit. But the decline in revenues, if it stands up, means that the state would not approach the limit either this year or next.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that, according to Deukmejian, nearly 92% of available state revenues must be used to support legally mandated education, health, welfare and other human service programs, pay off state bonds, and keep up with other legal obligations.

Various state officials in recent days have been expressing growing pessimism that April tax returns would provide budget relief.

John L. Vickerman, chief deputy legislative analyst, would not go as far as Larson, but said, “I keep waiting for the good news and I haven’t heard it yet.”

The state Franchise Tax Board would not confirm the shortfall in April tax receipts, but an agency spokesman said Tuesday that more than 90% of tax returns were in.