Sales tax receipts fluctuate

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November 9, 2009

By Janet Jacobs The Corsicana Daily Sun Mon Nov 09, 2009, 10:39 PM CST

Corsicana’s September sales taxes were up from August, but down from September 2008, according to figures from the city and the Texas Comptroller’s office.

Corsicana collected $462,583 for September sales, up from $400,512 for August sales. However, last year at this time, the city collected $512,819 for September 2008, and $395,913 for August 2008.

That’s roughly the amount needed to open the city’s swimming pools for summer 2010. The city budgeted without the pools for next summer, but private donors have stepped up to provide funding to allow the pools to open next summer.

Collecting less money from sales is a statewide issue, according to Texas Comptroller Susan Combs.

“Declining sales tax collections, which began in February, have continued with October’s collections,” Combs said. “Tax collections are down in major sectors of the economy, including retail trade, oil and natural gas and construction.”

Sales taxes paid in September are sent to the state in October, and a small percentage is returned to the cities in November.

Local sale tax allocations are down 8.7 percent across the state compared to Nov. 2008, the comptroller’s office reported. In Corsicana, the difference is actually 12 percent down from last November.

Overall, sales taxes for the fiscal year, which runs from October to September, were slightly less than the city had predicted in August, according to Ginger Richardson, Corsicana finance director.

The city had predicted it would collect $5,038,198, but actually only collected $5,034,621.

“I think we did fairly well on that year-end estimate,” Richardson said. “It’s still under where the year-end was, everyone’s is down, but we’re fortunate that ours is down a lot less.”

Statewide, Texas cities received $342.6 million in sales tax allocations last week, down 8.3 percent compared to November 2008. So far this calendar year, city sales tax allocations are down 4.2 percent compared to the same time period last year. Texas counties received November sales tax allocations of $28.2 million, down 14.5 percent compared to one year ago. For the calendar year-to-date, county sales tax allocations are running 3.7 percent below 2008 revenues.

The 153 special purpose taxing districts around the state received $19.4 million in sales tax, down 5.2 percent compared to last November. Ten local transit systems received $110.4 million in November sales tax rebates, down 8.7 percent compared to a year ago.

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