According to the Sales and Use Tax Collections report, Oklahoma City’s remittance outpaced projections for November 2020 by 7.7% combined.
The report, provided by City Manager Craig Freeman, from data collected by Oklahoma Tax Commission, represents actual collections for the last half of September and estimated collections from the first half of October.
General Fund Sales Tax revenue for November was $20.7 million, over $800,000 or 4.2% above the $19.9 million projection. Despite the higher than expected performance, collections were $1.1 million below November 2019, or 5.2% lower.
Year to date for fiscal year 2021, which started in July, performance is $6.6 million or 6.7% higher than the projections, but still off $5.3 million or 4.8% versus FY 2020. Collections each month have been lower than their counterpart from the previous fiscal year since April 2020, with May and June both off by more than 15% each.
Based on criteria from the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), sales tax performance can be broken up into the following categories: Retail, Hotels and Restaurants, Services, Manufacturing and Wholesale,
Utilities and Other. Retail collections made up roughly 53% of all collections for Oklahoma City, and were up 5.2%. Utilities and Other was up 1.2%, while the other categories saw declining revenues. Services were down 12.9%, Hotels and Restaurants 14.8%, and Manufacturing and Wholesale 23.8% versus November 2019.
Tulsa also saw over a 5% decline year over year for November. Lawton, Elgin, Norman, Edmond, Moore, Midwest City, and Yukon all performed better than the previous year, with Moore up over 10%, and Yukon up over 20%. Lawton saw an increase of 10%, and Elgin over 40% against last November. Statewide collections were $158.6 million, an increase of nearly $2.7 million.
Use tax performance for November in Oklahoma City was $5.8 million, over $938,000 or 19.2% higher than the $4.9 million projection. Use tax collections were $884,000 above November 2019 or 17.9% higher. Year to date for FY 2021 performance is nearly $3 million or 11.4% higher than projections, and $2.7 million, or 10.2% higher than FY 2020.
Retail Use tax accounted for 45% of collections in November 2020 and were up 23% year over year. Services were up 5.6%, and Utilities and Other was up 137.9%. Manufacturing and Wholesale declined 4.6% over November 2019.