Sales tax revenue for the most recent collection was down 4.5 percent compared to the same period last year, Chief Financial Officer/Treasurer/City Clerk Jason Muninger said Monday.
But the news isn’t all bad.
“We’re comparing back to some really large numbers in 2022 and 2023, so even though it’s a decrease, it’s still more than we were getting in years prior to 2022,” Muninger said. “Anytime the collection is over $2 million, it’s good news. This is simply a plateau that we knew would come sooner or later.”
The February collection was $2,022,475, which is $95,000 less than the February 2023 collection.
For the year, sales tax revenue is up $196,000, for a total of $15,815,053, compared to $15,618,772 for the same period last year.
“We are up 1.25 percent over last year’s collection,” Muninger said. “And we are currently $508,000, or 3.3 percent, over the anticipated budget. That is about twice the amount we anticipated.”
Muninger said the City always budgets conservatively, and this current fiscal year is no exception.
“The current budget is configured on an anticipated decrease of about 2 percent,” he said.
Use tax revenue
Use tax revenue for the period, which reflects online sales primarily in December 2023, was $514,933. The use tax was implemented in January 2023, so there are no comparisons to prior years available.
“The use tax went into effect in January 2023, but we did not start seeing returns for it until March,” Muninger said. “So we should start having comparisons for that tax this spring.”
The tax is generating a steady stream of revenue, he said.
“For the 12 months we have collected use tax, it has generated about $5 million in revenue — or roughly twice the amount budgeted,” he said.
The City budgeted a conservative $2.5 million (or $208,333 per month) in use tax revenue for the fiscal year, which runs from July 1 through June 30.
“It was difficult to project for a tax we had previously never collected,” Muninger said. “In looking at use tax revenue for Oklahoma cities our size that were not within a metropolitan area such as Tulsa or Oklahoma City, there really was no consistency. So we took an average of those cities and came up with $2.5 million, which we felt would be a conservative estimate and a good place to start.”