Blackwell sales tax revenue up 22%

July 24, 2020

The Oklahoma Tax Commission released their July Sales Tax and Sales Use Tax report on July 17. The report covers the period of May 15-31 and June 1-15. The State of Oklahoma reported $162.3 million distributed to the various municipalities which was $3.5 million more than a year ago. The state had a $15 million shortfall last month. The sales use tax distributed this month to the various municipalities across the state was around $24.2 million. The 77 counties across the state received $26.5 million in sales tax revenues and $4.6 million in sales use tax disbursements.

The good news is that most of the municipalities across Kay and Grant counties continue to show sales tax growth through the pandemic.

The City of Blackwell was up 22 percent on the latest report having received $273,781 compared to $224,768 in 2019 and $257,853 last month. This is good news because that means during the reopening this last eight weeks, residents are shopping locally. Now the sales use tax was down this month about 13-percent at $36,160 compared to $41,707 last month. At the same point in time it was about 33-percent more than last year when the city only received $23,894.

The Kay County general fund saw their sales tax numbers jump by 55-percent this month compared to a year ago, with $456,138, compared to $294,047 in 2019. The county was up slightly over the $426,101 they received last month. The county also saw a solid increase in sales use tax revenues with $68,563 compared to $32,166 in 2019. The bad news is that those revenues are down 20-percent from last month when the county collected $85,042.

Across the rest of the area, Braman downward spiral on sales tax revenues finally came to an end with a solid month of $3,911 which was up 11-percent over last year’s numbers of $3,508 and was also up over last month’s numbers of $2,548. Ponca City is holding its own with another solid month with $1.277 million in sales tax revenues, which was 19-percent over last year when the city collected $1.073 million.

Medford showed another 67-percent increase this month with $71,911 compared to $42,864 last year. The numbers were down a little from last month when the town got $73,852. Tonkawa bounced back this month with a solid 11-percent increase with $128,767 compared to $115,956 in 2019 and $116,768 on the June report. Newkirk was on the plus side again with $36,584 compared to $34,153 last year but was flat to last month’s numbers of $36,223.

The sales use tax across the two counties was inconsistent based on the various municipalities. Ponca City while down from their June report were up 30-percent over their 2019 numbers for the same time.

Grant County sales tax numbers overall were up 18-percent this month over their 2019 numbers and still had a $6,500 increase over last month’s numbers. increase. Grant county sales use tax numbers were also up by 9.5 percent this month.