La Grange Sales Tax Down by $100,000

When sales tax payments from the state arrived last week, La Grange and Schulenburg alone, among Fayette County’s six cities, actually had an uptick from last year.

But it wasn’t nearly enough for La Grange to make up for a huge drop last month, as the pandemic closures continue to take their toll on local businesses.

La Grange got $170,613 in May, up slightly from last May’s $169,745. But for 2020 as a whole, La Grange is down more than $100,000 in sales tax revenue.

The first five months of the year brought just over $793,000 to La Grange. That’s down 11.6% from just over $897,000 this time last year.

Schulenburg, on the other hand, got a huge increase in May – enough to put it well ahead of last year to date. Schulenburg got nearly $114,000 for May, compared to just over $78,000 last May. That puts it 10.1% ahead of last year’s pace.

May’s payments for the other towns in Fayette County were down from May 2019, ranging from under 4% for Flatonia to over 57% for Round Top.

So far, each town has received five monthly payments. Carmine got big payments early in the year, so it is still up more than 31% from this time in 2019.

Schulenburg is up 10.1% and Flatonia is up 3.2%. Round Top, despite its big drop in May, is still up 0.2% for the year.

Both La Grange and Flatonia are down for the year.

Besides cities, nine counties in the area levy the optional local sales tax. Only two of them saw May payments that were below last year’s.

Fayette County got just over $190,000 in May, up 1.1% from last May. So far this year, Fayette County has received just over $892,000, up 3.1% from this point a year ago.

Adjoining Lee County apparently has had an error adjustment, getting more than $1 million more this year than last. The state does not make public who pays the taxes, so exact sources are difficult to determine.

Reporting errors do occur, though. For instance, earlier this year it was discovered that taxes that should have been paid to the city of Austin instead were credited to Austin County. Now Austin County is having to return that money, which results in it showing a big loss compared to last year.

Payments to cities and counties in May represent sales made in March and reported by merchants to the state in April. Even more businesses were closed in April than in March, so June sales tax payments are likely to be off by even more than May payments were.

The state plans to release next month’s payments on June 12.