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January sales tax revenues down
Published Tuesday, March 17, 2009
NATCHEZ — For the second month in a row sales tax revenues for Natchez were down.
After reporting a 3.58 percent drop in December from the previous year, January’s sales tax numbers indicate a 1.98 percent drop from January 2008.
City Clerk Donnie Holloway said the city collected $390,258 in sales tax revenue in January compared to $397,781 in January of last year.
The city collected $519,000 in sales tax revenues in December 2008, down from $538,000 in December 2007.
Holloway said the $7,500 drop from January to January was a reflection of the economic downturn that is plaguing the entire country.
“(It’s) just a result of the overall economic situation everyone one is in,” he said.
Holloway said, given the circumstances, he wasn’t surprised by the collections.
“I thought they might even be a little lower than what there are,” he said.
But despite the past two months reports, Holloway said Natchez is still ahead of the pace of last year’s collections by 4.5 percent.
And though Natchez is feeling the effects of the national economic situation, Holloway said things could be worse.
“We have been fortunate,” he said. “Some cities have been losing revenue long before we started.”
He said he spoke with officials in others cities in January, and those cities were experiencing 3 or 4 percent drops in sales tax revenue.
While he is pleased that the city is still exceeding last year’s collections, Holloway isn’t sure when to expect the sales tax revenues to stop falling. He said he wouldn’t be surprised to see collections to continue to drop.
Mississippi sales tax revenues are collected two months after the fact; meaning sales tax numbers for February will be reported in April.
“We’re just going month by month just seeing how the economy is going to affect us,” he said. “There are a lot of things happening that don’t sound good at the present time.”
Comments
Posted by gemccull (Gary McCullars) on March 17, 2009 at 9:30 a.m. (Suggest removal)
"But despite the past two months reports, Holloway said Natchez is still ahead of the pace of last year’s collections by 4.5 percent."
How can Natchez be ahead of the pace for collections if we received less than a year ago? Just wondering.
Guess, I should take Gov'mint accounting/financial analysis.
Posted by Cursechez (anonymous) on March 17, 2009 at 9:47 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Posted by gemccull (Gary McCullars) on March 17, 2009 at 9:30 a.m. "Guess, I should take Gov'mint accounting/financial analysis."
Fuzzy Math 101
Voodoo Economics 201
Posted by LOVESNATCHEZ (anonymous) on March 17, 2009 at 10:30 a.m. (Suggest removal)
And yet the B.O.S. still hate the E.D.A. It's only going to get worse if we don't have the E.D.A. to bring businesses into Natchez. And I'm not talking huge companies, they bring small business in and that's what we need.
Posted by beammeupscotty (anonymous) on March 17, 2009 at 12:03 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Tax refunds cause a small bump, when it is gone the real numbers will surface.
Posted by Bigfish (anonymous) on March 17, 2009 at 3:24 p.m. (Suggest removal)
The fiscal year doesn't start Jan 1 for the city, so for this fiscal year total sales are still above the prior fiscal year, do to increased sales at the beginning fiscal year. . . . . .not fuzzy math just a misunderstanding of when the fiscal year starts.
Posted by Krogers (anonymous) on March 17, 2009 at 11:30 p.m. (Suggest removal)
well the way I see it, Natchez has been in a recession for at least five years already..... that's why it doesn't seem so bad right now, is because it's been bad for a long time already, we've gotten used to it......
but at least the air is cleaner and doesn't stink like it did when IP was running, that's nice
as the industry base of Johns Manville, Int'l Paper, Fidelity Tire, faded out we slid into a recession years ago, now we're just bottoming out and experiencing a little rebirth of downtown, and a bit of expansion and small business growth of bypass crusaders- namely dollar stores and cash cows along with the hotels and the casino hanging on......thank God for our little tourism trade and the antebellum owners for perpetuating that. The mess in our medical services hasn't helped, it would be nice if Regional would sell and that debocle would turn around.... the prison hasn't started up yet, has hiring begun there?
oh well, we'll just have to dig in and weather it out and do the best we can, and work together --hmmm, reckon that would work?
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