Sales Tax Allocations Down for March

The Texas State Comptroller’s office released sales tax revenue information and allocations for the month of March 2010 for cities across the state. These sales tax numbers reflect taxes collected in January 2010.

The sales tax revenue being paid to all Brown County cities in the month of March is down across the board once again. Bangs, Blanket, Brownwood, and Early all saw a drop off as compared to the March 2009 numbers (see chart below).

State Comptroller Susan Combs will deliver $404.4 million in March sales tax payments to Texas cities, counties, transit systems and special purpose taxing districts.  Sales tax allocations statewide are down 6.7 percent compared to March 2009. So far this calendar year, local sales tax allocations are down 8.4 percent compared to the first three months of 2009.

“After eight straight months of double digit declines, sales tax losses have begun to moderate,” Combs said. “Sales tax revenue continues to be down in major sectors such as retail, oil and gas production and construction.  However, there was a slight uptick in the manufacturing sector.  We will keep monitoring the revenue, and as we have recently noted we expect further declines in the near term before a return to sales tax revenue growth later this year.”

According to the local numbers released today, Brownwood is about on track with the state average for the month, and doing slightly better than the state average year-to-date.