October sales tax revenue was down 1.9 percent compared to a historic collection during the same period last year, Chief Financial Officer and City Clerk Jason Muninger said this week.
“Even with the slight decline, we are still up 1.5 percent over last year’s collection,” Muninger said. “And we are 3.2 percent over what we budgeted for, so we’re about $243,000 over budget currently. We are pretty spot-on, all things considered.”
Muninger said October sales tax collections were down $39,000 for a total of $1,949,178, compared to $1,986,790 for the same period last year. Year to date totals are $7,802,014, which is $243,210 over the anticipated budget.
He also said reports on local social media that City sales tax collections are up 17 percent are inaccurate.
“Sales tax is actually only up 1.5 percent, which is 3.2 percent over what we budgeted,” he said. “I’m not certain where that number (17 percent) came from or how it got to be in circulation, but it is not correct.”
Use tax
Use tax revenue for the month was $398,000. The use tax was implemented in January of this year, so there are no comparisons to last year available.
“We budgeted $2.5 million in use tax for the year, so to hit that number we need to collect an average of $208,333 in revenue each month and we well exceeded that for this month,” Muninger said. “So far we have collected a little over $1.5 million in use tax for the year.
“The use tax is still an unknown. We haven’t hit any of the Christmas shopping time yet to see if those are enlarged amounts or if it stays pretty even.”
With only a few exceptions, City sales tax collections have shown increases over the past two and a half years, many times with record highs. Local shopping, inflation, and stimulus funds are thought to be factors in the increases.