No dip in county sales tax
By Steve Herring
Published in News on August 3, 2017 5:50 AM
A feared dip in Wayne County's sales tax receipts brought on by the opening of the U.S. 70 Bypass has yet to materialize.
For the second quarter in a row since the highway opened in late May 2016, the county's sales tax revenues continue to exceed the prior year's figures.
As of April 30, the collection exceeded the same time for the previous year by $867,784.73.
Most of the credit is due to the Article 44 sales tax adjustment and reallocation that took place last year, Wayne County Finance Director Allison Speight said.
"However, I can't say that it is the only thing that bailed us out because that is actually a reallocation of your other articles (sales taxes), which means they are still based on sales," Speight told Wayne County commissioners during their Tuesday morning meeting.
Speight also presented a chart summarizing the last 21 months of sales tax receipts.
"It is worth noting that, with the exception of the October (2016) sales month, each month has seen an increase over the same month in prior years," she said. "The decrease in October can most likely be (attributed) to decreased sales due to the effects of Hurricane Matthew."
Commissioner Joe Daughtery called the figures "really amazing" because everyone had thought the new bypass would hurt local sales which would translate into lost sales tax revenues.
Sales tax revenues are distributed to counties and municipalities 60 days in arrears.
For example, sales tax revenues received in January 2017 represent taxes collected the previous October, and tax revenues reported for December 2016 represent taxes collected in September of that year.
June's figures will not be available until September. July's numbers will be released in October and August's totals in November.
As such it remains to be seen what the impact of the summer beach traffic on the bypass will be.
The following is a comparison of the past six months with the same period last year (with the actual sales month in parentheses):
* February (November 2016) $1,711,406.45; Feb.-16 (Nov.-15) $1,496,172.32.
* March (December 2016) $1,950,885.41; March-16 (Dec.-15) $1,782,981.58.
* April (January 2017) $1,480,060.11; April-16 (Jan.-16) $1,397,088.86.
* May (February 2017) $1,607,435.98; May-16 (Feb.-16) $1,482,156.48.
* June (March 2017) $1,951,624.63; June-16 (March-16) $1,516,804.62
* July (April 2017) $1,753,436.53; July-16 (April-16) $1,601,908.77.
The county was "kind of at a loss" as to how to budget sales tax for fiscal year 2016-17 because of the Article 44 adjustments, Speight said.
Also, the county was experiencing "quite a bit" of growth without that fund, she said.
"There were just so many changes going on it was hard to estimate what the increase would be," she said. "But there was an increase and that is the important part."
Using numbers provided by the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners, Wayne County scaled back its budget to be conservative in sales tax revenue projections for 2016-17, she said.
The actual numbers did not quite reach the projections, but the figures are not as far off as what she had been afraid they might be.
So compared to last year the county is ahead, she said.
But after the numbers are audited commissioners may see the numbers are somewhat under budget, Speight said.