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Sales tax figures an interesting read
By Patrick Graham
The Paris News
Published October 17, 2009
We had a story on Friday’s front page outlining how the latest sales tax figures for this year compared to the same time last year.
Not surprising, given current economic conditions, statewide sales tax numbers are down.
In a report released earlier in the week, Texas Comptroller Susan Combs said the state collected $1.47 billion in sales tax in September, which reflects August sales, down 12.5 percent compared to a year ago.
“Declining sales tax collections, which began in February, have continued with September’s collections,” Combs said. “Weakness is still evident in all major sectors of the state economy, including oil and natural gas, retail trade and construction. Decreases in monthly collections are expected to continue through the end of 2009.”
What’s interesting, however, is during the same time period Lamar County has seen a 9.53 percent increase in sales tax revenues year to date, meaning at the same time the state economy is down compared to last year, Lamar County’s economy overall is up.
Of equal interest is how individual municipalities are faring here in Lamar County.
The City of Paris, for example, is the only municipality that has seen an increase in its sales tax disbursement from the state comptroller year to date, increasing from $5.8 million to $6.4 million year to date or 10.45 percent compared to the same time last year.
The performance by Paris is why the county’s sales tax distribution overall is up although the other cities in the county are down year to date, and it shows Paris is experiencing some pretty healthy growth during a time when most would love to just break even right now.
Which is probably how the cities of Toco and Sun Valley to some degree feel. Year to date Sun Valley’s sales tax disbursements from the state are down -4.66 percent compared to same time last year. Toco’s numbers are down -11.45 percent compared to the same time last year.
Their tax distributions from the state for the month of October were even worse. Sun Valley’s was down -57.30 percent compared to the same month last year, while Toco was down -51.68 percent compared to the same month last year.
For years, Sun Valley and Toco benefited from being the only places in the county to purchase alcohol. It seems pretty clear the decision by voters earlier this year to allow beer and wine sales in the City of Paris has cut into the monopoly these two have enjoyed for so many years. It probably also has something to do with Paris enjoying increased sales tax distributions at the same time the distributions in Sun Valley and Toco are down.
And remember, stores in Paris only began selling beer and wine just before the Fourth of July, which means at this point we are only looking at a couple of months of impact from the voters’ decision.
It will be interesting to see how these numbers look for these three municipalities when October rolls around again next year.
Patrick Graham is the publisher of The Paris News.
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