Sales tax revenue grows for March

After months of weak performance, Clarendon’s sales tax revenue edged up this month when Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar delivered local sales tax allocations last week.

Clarendon’s allocation rose 1.31 percent to $25,132.06 compared to $25,462.93 for the same period one year ago.

The city remains behind for the calendar year-to-date, down 5.55 percent at $91,163.15.

Clarendon’s sales tax revenue has been down for 10 of the last 14 months.

For calendar year 2015, Clarendon was down 2.24 percent, and the city was also down 3.21 percent for calendar 2014.

For this year-to-date, Memphis is down 4.72 percent, Wellington is down 0.63 percent, Claude is up 9.33 percent, and Childress is up 5.7 percent.

Hedley continued to make gains with growth this period of 12.03 percent from $364.55 one year ago to $408.55 this month. That city is now up 35.75 percent for the year-to-date at $2,170.15.

Howardwick slipped 9.42 percent for the month at $1,276.91 but remains up 15.39 percent for the year at $1,276.91.

Local sales tax allocations across the state totaled $585.6 million, 0.7 percent less than in March 2015. These allocations are based on sales made in January by businesses that report tax monthly.

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

Hegar reported earlier this month that the state’s share of sales tax revenue for the month totaled $2.3 billion, down 6.8 percent compared to one year ago.

“Last month’s decrease in sales tax collections as compared to February 2015 was expected with the continued contraction in both the manufacturing and oil industries,” Hegar said.

“It should be pointed out that in the coming months we expect comparisons to last year’s collections to be more favorable, because collections in the last half of fiscal 2015 didn’t grow as fast the first half.”

Total sales tax revenue for the state for the three months ending in February 2016 is down 4 percent compared to the same period a year ago.

Sales tax revenue is the largest source of state funding for the state budget, accounting for 56 percent of all tax collections.