June Sales Taxes Up But Year Still Trails

A$225,088 payment from the state put La Grange on the plus side for sales tax revenue in June. That’s up 6.5% from last June’s revenue.

That still leaves the city down for the year, however. For the first six months of 2024, La Grange has received $1,244,719 from the local option retail sales tax. That’s 3% less than the same period last year.

In fact, three of Fayette County’s seven cities are running behind last year’s revenue numbers. That’s mostly because 2023 was such a banner year. All seven are well ahead of the same period two years ago.

Fayetteville is the best example of this. Its $63,754 is well above the $62,044 it got in the first half of 2022. But in the first half of 2023, it got a whopping $141,373. This means Fayetteville is down about 55% from last year.

Around the area, two towns have similar bonanzas for the current year. Hempstead had received $1.1 million at this point in 2023, but this year has taken in $2.5 million, a 122.1% increase. Similarly Shiner had just over $282,000 last year, but this year has doubled that to over $567,000.

Because Texas makes tax payments confidential, it isn’t known exactly why either of these towns have gained so much.

In Fayette County, the four towns with increases are Round Top, Flatonia, Carmine and Ellinger. Round Top now seems to have moved ahead of Flatonia permanently for the Number Three position. The antiques fair epicenter has received over a quarter million dollars so far this year. Schulenburg is Number Two among Fayette County towns.

Nine area counties also levy the optional sales tax. Three of them, including Fayette County, are down for the year.

Gonzales County, where the Eagle Ford Shale oil boom first developed, is seeing sales growth again. Its revenue for 2024 is up 30.8% from the same time last year. Colorado County is up 29.0% and Lee County is up 26.5%.

Of the 25 towns in the region tracked by the Record, only seven are running behind last year. The two largest trade centers are Bastrop, which is up 5.8% to $6.3 million for the first half of the year, and Brenham, which is up 2.9% to $5 million.