Bastrop Baffling, But Sales Taxes Mostly Flat

Most times, monthly sales tax payments from the state are fairly predictable. But sometimes there’s a big gain or a big drop.

For Bastrop County, September brought an astonishingly big gain.

Last September, Bastrop County got just under $1 million for the month. This time it got over $5 million. For September alone.

Nine months into the year, it’s received $13.4 million. That’s almost double the $7.3 million it had this time last year.

The city of Bastrop, on the other hand, got barely $440,000 for September. Same month last year, it was over $1 million. That’s a 58% drop for the month.

These numbers were reported by the State Comptroller’s Office, which oversees tax collections in Texas.

Maybe the Bastrop pay- ments were just mistakes that will be corrected next month. What isn’t a mistake though, is the big growth in Austin County, just east of Fayette County.

Sealy has received over $4.7 million so far this year. That’s up 59.6% from last year, when it had less than $3 million at this point. Bellville, also in Austin County, is up over 7% for the year. Exactly what has caused this increase isn’t known, but that area has been surging all year.

Austin County isn’t up as much as Sealy, but it’s still 27.2% ahead of last year. Cities collect taxes only on sales made within their city limits, while counties collect taxes on sales made anywhere in the county, whether inside a city or not.

For the most part, however, 2026 has been fairly flat for this region.

Five of Fayette County’s town were up for the first nine months of the year; two were down. All were within 7% of last year’s numbers.

Schulenburg has grown the most this year, with $1.1 million so far in 2026, 6.8% better than last year’s $1.0 million.

Round Top is up 5.3%, Flatonia up 4.1%, Carmine up 3.9% and La Grange up 1.6%.

Fayetteville is down 5.5% for the year and Ellinger is down 3.6%.

Of the other 18 towns in the region tracked by the Record, 14 are up (most only by single digits) and four are down.

Among the nine area counties that levy the local option sales tax, seven are up and two are down.

Fayette County has collected $2.5 million in sales tax so far this year, but that is down 5.9% from the same period last year.