City sales tax figure continues to slide

Clarendon’s sales tax revenues continued to slip this month, but Hedley and Howardwick saw increases in their numbers when Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar made February allocations last week.

These allocations are based on sales made in December by businesses that report tax monthly; October, November and December sales by quarterly filers; and 2015 sales by businesses that report tax annually.

Clarendon’s figure this month was $39,061.65, down 6.44 percent compared to the same period last year. That brings the city’s calendar year-to-date total to $65,700.22, a decrease of 7.97 percent.

Hedley was up 26.14 percent this month to $1,256.46 and a year-to-date figure of $1,761.73, which is up 42.76 percent.

Howardwick’s revenue for the month was up 39.23 percent at $1,464.47, bringing that city’s year-to-date figure to $2,526.84, up 33.92 percent.

Other communities in the southeast Panhandle were mostly seeing postitive news in the comptroller’s February allocations.

Claude was up 6.87 percent, Memphis was up 15.84 percent, Wellington gained 5.97 percent, Childress climbed six percent higher, and Panhandle rose 4.25 percent.

Silverton and Shamrock, however, dropped, 7.57 percent and 16.87 percent respectively.

Across the state, Hegar sent local governments $867.1 million in sales tax allocations for February, 0.7 percent less than in February 2015.

“Energy-centric cities such as Odessa, Midland, Corpus Christi and Houston continued to see decreases in sales tax allocation,” Hegar said. “Other areas of the state helped to somewhat offset those losses as cities such as San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth and Dallas saw moderate increases in allocations.”

State revenues are also hurting. Hegar said state sales tax revenue in January totaled $2.47 billion, down 4 percent compared to January 2015.

“As expected, reduced spending in oil and gas-related sectors resulted in a fall in total sales tax revenue,” Hegar said. “Collections from industries mainly driven by consumer spending, including retail trade, restaurants and services, continued to grow, as did receipts from the construction sector.

“I would also note the sales tax collections in January 2015 were a record high and represented a double-digit percentage increase over January 2014, meaning this month’s collections are being compared to unusually high collections from a year ago.”

Total sales tax revenue for the three months ending in January 2016 is down 2.8 percent compared to the same period a year ago. Sales tax revenue is the largest source of funding for the state budget, accounting for 56 percent of all tax collections.