Tag: sales tax

Lampasas Sales Tax Receipts Eke Out Tiny 1.2% Gain – Versus UP 6.66% For Texas.

Lampasas recorded a 1.2% gain in sales tax receipts for the month of May. Trailing the state as a whole, which saw a 6.66% rise in revenue.

Lampasas is now dead flat on YTD sales tax revenue – despite inflation AND the solar eclipse ‘bump’ in activity. Apparently, the eclipse was only worth about $2,800 in added revenue – a FAR cry from the $70,000 the City spent preparing for the eclipse.

How did other cities fare?

Burnet: UP a whopping 21.8%! I’m guessing this had to do with the eclipse and the giant party/festival they had there. That caused an extra $60,000 in revenue for city coffers.

Marble Falls: UP a modest 2%

Dallas: UP an impressive 9.35%

Austin: UP 4.5%

April Sales Tax Receipts – Lampasas Resumes Downward Spiral. DOWN 6.35% YOY

After a massive and inexplicable 19% RISE last month, this month sees the downward trend resume. See row 585 as always.

LAST April, we saw a +8.7% – which was the last positive print of 2023 before we took a nosedive. That doesn’t bode well for the next 6 months or so.

The state of Texas as a whole was barely positive at +0.32%

Sales tax receipts YTD are now basically flat (at -.025%) compared to this point last year – at $1.23 million.

How did other cities fare?

Burnet: Barely positive at+1.6%

Marble Falls: DOWN 6.18% – similar to Lampasas

Dallas: UP 4% – well above the state as a whole.

Austin: UP 9% – must be all those stupid Palestinian keffiyehs the UT students are buying by the thousands for their protests. Or perhaps the cops buying tear gas.

Lampasas Sales Tax Receipts Crushed Again – DOWN 3.30% From A Year Ago.

Oh dear – this is becoming a worrying streak!

We have now seen EIGHT monthly declines in the last nine months.

After last month’s 1.75% drop, sales tax for February (actually January collections) dropped again – DOWN 3.30% [row 585 as always].

Texas as a whole was UP only 0.62% – so once again, Lampasas trails the state in sales tax receipts. This time by nearly 4 percentage points!

Lampasas may have to toss out their usual assumption that sales taxes will grow to the sky and cover the cost of every moronic project they undertake.

How did other cities fare?

Burnet: UP 10% – crushing us again (was up 16.5% last month) – our sister city must have a REALLY good economic development director!

Marble Falls: DOWN 2.81%

Dallas: UP 33% (!!!)

Austin: UP 0.27%

Lampasas Sales Tax Receipts UP 10.2% Over Last March. State of Texas UP 12.8%

I have to admit, I am shocked these numbers continue to climb like this. A combination of inflation and libtards flooding our state keeps sales taxes going higher.

Lampasas trailed the state as a whole by 2.6 percentage points – an improvement over last month’s 6.2% gap.

LAST year, Lampasas saw an 18% increase [see row 585] in March 2022 compared to March 2021 – so quite a drop off from last year. The state of Texas saw a 28% increases last March compared to 2021.

Year-to-date, the City has collected $955,726 compared to $887,774 for the same period last year – an increase of 7.6% (roughly in line with inflation, I might add).

Now that Wool & Vine has gone bust, I guess we’ll see these sales tax numbers drop even more precipitously next month, right? LOL.

Lampasas Sales Tax Receipts Slow Drastically In October.

Well, I finally found the sales tax receipt number for October…and it ain’t real pretty.

[Payments to cities – see row 585]

Receipts grew only 3.44% compared to October 2021 – $251,000 versus $243,000 a year earlier.

Considering inflation is currently raging at anywhere between 8% and 12% (depending on who you believe) and that the state of Texas as a whole saw sales tax revenue increase almost 12% year-over-year, it is clear our City is now lagging badly.

If the price of everything went UP 10% in the last year, but your sales tax receipts (which are not adjusted for inflation) only went up 3.4% – then you are actually seeing a decline in sales.

All those millions borrowed by the City and the LEDC for their business park and other dubious projects? Don’t sweat that. According to Mayor Monroe:

“Typically, we are able to pay those down within the nine years and have saved a substantial amount of money”

I’m sure it’ll all work out. And if it doesn’t? Well, there are plenty of taxpayer cows to be milked harder if need be.

Latest Sales Tax Receipts UP 14.3% – Still Trail Texas

New sales tax numbers are out. Lampasas UP 14.3% compared to last September. Yipeee!

But for the entire state of Texas, sales tax numbers were UP 17.2%. D’oh!

We still trail the state. Surrounding “towns” like Kempner (+22.5%) and Hamilton (+19.5%) saw growth well above state average and crushed our nuts. I guess they have REALLY good Economic Development Corporations or something. If Kempner didn’t pussy out and come down hard on the coffee/bikini cafe some guy wanted to open, they’d probably see huge growth for two years!

Latest Sales Tax Receipts UP 12% – But Still Trail Texas

New sales tax numbers are out. Lampasas UP 12% compared to last August. Yipeee!

But for the entire state of Texas, sales tax number UP 13%. We still trail the state. But hey, it’s getting closer! Only off by one percentage point this time!

For the fiscal year, Texas saw sales tax receipts soar 19.3% while Lampasas is only up 9.47% year-to-date….roughly in line with inflation. There is no LEDC-led miracle growth here – just inflation.

Feb and March numbers compare state raw (unadjusted) to Lampasas raw numbers now.

Lampasas Sales Tax Receipts: Not As Great As The LEDC Brags About

Time to dive into sales taxes again. I do this because the Lampasas Economic Dunces Club does a lot of crowing about how they keep going up – implying that THEY have something to do with this. LOL.

In reality, the entire state of Texas has seen an explosion in sales tax receipts and the City of Lampasas actually TRAILS this trend badly.

For the months of February and March, the state of Texas gave two numbers – adjusted and unadjusted. This is due to winter storm Uri in 2021, which caused a disruption in receipts. I used the LOWER number just to be conservative. The state STILL stomped our numbers.

Remember: headline inflation during this period is around 8 or 9% and the TRUE inflation numbers are likely closer to 12 or 15%. If sales tax gains are up 8% but inflation is 14%, you are actually doing quite poorly.

As you can see, there is only ONE MONTH this year where Lampasas exceeded the trend for the entire state: May. In all likelihood, our May number was tainted by something being pulled forward from July – seeing as how July collapsed massively YoY (MINUS 7%).

The August numbers for Lampasas will be out in a week or so. We shall see.

BONUS DATA:

The state of Texas said recently that sales tax receipts have jumped 19.3% for the latest fiscal year (9/1/21 through 8/31/22).

In the latest LEDC packet, we learned that sales tax receipts are running 9.14% higher year-to-date (unclear if that means FISCAL year-to-date or CALENDAR year-to-date) – see page 33.

While it is not entirely an apples-to-apples comparison, we see that the City of Lampasas also lags badly here as well by 10 percentage points – barely matching inflation.

Sales Tax Receipts UP 11% For July – Making Me Look Like An Idiot.

Pardon me while I wipe this egg off my face and eat some humble pie.

After seeing sales taxes plunge about 8% last month, I wondered out loud if the top was in. If the never-ending money train was about to come to a screeching halt. The U.S. is officially in recession, after all.

Nope. UP 11% for July.

So where was the error in my thinking?

Also, the latest CPI number was UP about 8.5% YoY and we know that number is pretty much bullshit as the reality is much higher. If you use the CPI formula from the 1980s, inflation is more like 12% to 15%. So to see our sales tax receipts UP 11% YoY is pretty much in line with that.

So I guess the REAL question is how the hell sales tax numbers for JUNE actually DROPPED 8%?? That is a huge move and clearly a big outlier now. I need to go back and see the actual numbers from last year. Was last June a huge outlier to the upside or was this June way down for some reason?

Although I am eating crow right now, I stand by my assertion that Spring Ho had nothing to do with the most recent sales tax increase – because we also had Spring Ho last year, and I highly doubt that approximately $330,000 more (8% of $330k = the $26,000 increase between last July and this July) dollars were spent this Spring Ho versus last year. It is purely due to inflation – especially in the gasoline area – which is UP 20% over last July.

Only thing to do now is try and find details on the 8% drop in June 2022 and see what caused it. I have no clue what it could be.

**UPDATE #2 – 9/9/22 **

Looking at last June’s $252,670, it looks high compared to the months around it. Why was June about $20k high last year? Hell if I know. All seasonal effects should be accounted for as these are always YoY comparisons. Maybe everyone bought a shit ton of repair hardware after the Freeze of the Century last year? Simultaneously, this June’s numbers look kinda low by about $10,000 compared to surrounding months. Economic slowdown?

So it looks like a bit of both: slightly higher than normal last year and slightly lower this year. But July of THIS year rebounded strong in a MoM comparison while July of 2021 saw a big DROP MoM compared to June 2021.

So what I did was combine months into two-month blocks to smooth things out a bit to see if there are any clues as to where receipts may be heading. Here are the results:

May/June 2021 versus May/June 2022 – the increase is only 1.3% YoY ($465k versus $471k)

June/July 2021 versus June/July 2022 – the increase is only 1.5% YoY ($490k versus $497k)

July/Aug 2021 versus July/Aug 2022 – the increase is 11.5% (461k versus $513k) – receipts have picked back up. Increase for Texas as a whole was 13% YoY for August.

Contrast that to earlier in the year:

I compared March/April 2021 with March/April 2022 and the increase was significant: $403,000 versus $444,000 or a TEN PERCENT increase YoY – which is more in line with “official” inflation.

Then I moved to the April/May combined month comparisons. We see it slow a bit to 8% YoY ($459k versus $496k).

So as we move down the calendar from March/April and compare two-month blocks of receipts, we see: up 10%, up 8%, up 1.3%, up 1.5% and up 11.5%

Slowdown has disappeared – back to double digit increases.