U.S. states saw the biggest decline in tax revenues in 46 years during the first quarter of this year, Rockefeller Institute of Government reported.

State tax revenues dropped 11.7 percent in the first three months of 2009 when compared with the year-earlier quarter, the sharpest drop the institute has seen in 46 years of available data, it said in a report released Friday in Albany, N.Y.

Overall, state tax revenues fell to the lowest first-quarter level since 2005, the biggest drop-off coming in the decline in personal income tax collections, which were down 17.5 percent, the report indicated. Forty-five of the 50 states experienced revenue drop-offs as the recession continued to hammer state budgets, Rockefeller Institute officials said.

And projections for the second quarter of 2009 looked even worse. Early figures for April and May showed an overall decline of nearly 20 percent for total taxes when compared with 2008's figures.

"Such extraordinary weakness in revenues, along with continued if more moderate growth in expenditures, make widespread budget shortfalls highly likely this year," report authors Donald Boyd and Lucy Dadayan said in a release.