Sales tax receipts up 9.4 percent last month

Texas sales tax receipts for December were $1.81 billion, up 9.4 percent over the same month a year earlier, Comptroller Susan Combs announced today.

It's the ninth month in a row that we've seen year-over-year improvement -- working, of course, off a dreadful 2009 yardstick. Combs said sales tax receipts grew "across the board." She mentioned the energy and manufacturing sectors, as well as stores and restaurants. The 9.4 percent monthly increase marks the highest of recent months.

But in a sense, it's too little, too late. As Combs acknowledged on Monday, her November 2009 forecast that sales tax would grow by 6.9 percent in the current budget year, working off the flat growth she expected in the previous year, was too optimistic. The prior year saw a decline of about 7 percent in revenue from sales tax, the workhorse in the state's fiscal barn. Comparing Combs' Monday estimate to her November 2009 guess, I believe current year sales tax is projected to fall about 10 percent below the $22.5 billion she'd predicted -- to $20.2 billion. Pretty soon, that gets to be real money.

For the next two years, she's forecasting sales tax revenues increases, year over year, of 3.9 percent in fiscal 2012 and 4.5 percent in 2013.

The go-go years just past the midpoint of the last decade -- when we saw annual jumps of 6 percent, 11 percent, even 12 percent in sales tax receipts -- are definitely over.

Source: http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/01/sales-tax-receipts-up-9-percen.html

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