You should not need any formulas unless you want them for data selection.
Create a crosstab in your Report Header.
In the Cross Tab Expert:
Add your Date field to Columns
Click on Group Options and change to "for each year"
Add the date field to the Rows
click on group options and verify or change to "for each day"
add the field to summarize (transactions I believe) and click on change summary and set the calculate as either SUM or COUNT or DISTINCTCOUNT depending on what you are looking for here.
If you don't want the grand total as a column click on the Customize Style tab and select "Suppress Row grand Totals" and "Suppress Column Grand Totals".
Note this will only return values for each day where some data exists in your table and will not insert zeros if both years had nothing for that day.
OK that was wrong, sorry, been on vacation and need to get back in the swing of things 
You do need formulas...
Create a formula for your year data as 'Year' using this
totext(datepart("yyyy",{table.datefield}),0,'')
Create a formula for your day data as 'Day' using this
MonthName(Month({table.datefield})) + ' ' + totext(datepart("d",{table.datefield}),0,'')
Now create the crosstab
In the Cross Tab Expert:
Add your @Year formula field to Columns
Add the @Day formula field to the Rows
add the field to summarize (transactions I believe) and click on change summary and set the calculate as either SUM or COUNT or DISTINCTCOUNT depending on what you are looking for here.
If you don't want the grand total as a column click on the Customize Style tab and select "Suppress Row grand Totals" and "Suppress Column Grand Totals".
Note this will only return values for each day where some data exists in your table and will not insert zeros if both years had nothing for that day.
Edited by DBlank - 23 Feb 2009 at 12:02pm