At Mid-Year, Half of Fayette County Towns Up, Half Down on Sales Tax

Just as COVID-19 hasn’t infected all parts of the country equally, neither has the economic pain of the pandemic shutdown been evenly felt.

Local sales tax revenue, generally considered a good indicator of overall economic health, has been severely pinched in most places. But several towns and counties have seen big gains.

In Fayette County, Schulenburg alone among the county’s six towns had a gain for June, compared to the same month last year. Its June check was up nearly 13 percent from June 2019.

But Round Top dropped 48 percent from last June and Carmine dropped 44 percent. La Grange slid a little less than 5 percent.

June sales tax checks to cities represent sales made in April and reported to the state in May. And April was when the shopping shutdown was probably its worst.

On the other hand, a few places saw much bigger checks than usual. Lee County and Colorado County showed astonishingly large gains.

The state does not reveal information about individual taxpayers, so exactly why the checks are so large isn’t known. Often it can be due to a past error being corrected. For example, one major business reported sales made in the city of Austin as having been made in Austin County. As a result, Austin County got the sales tax, but when it was discovered, had to pay it back so it could go to the city of Austin. That’s causing Austin County currently to be in negative territory compared to last year.

Regardless, halfway through 2020, seven of the nine area counties that levy the optional sales tax are ahead of last year, depite the Coronavirus pandemic.

Lee County is up 170%, thanks to a huge gain in the June payment, and Colorado County is up more than 50%.

Fayette County is just barely up, at 0.5%.

Washington County is down just over 8% and Austin County down 17%.

Among Fayette County’s six towns, half are ahead and half are behind last year’s pace.

La Grange has received just under $964,000 so far this year. That’s down 10.4% from a year ago. Schulenburg got over $450,000, up 10.5% from last year. Flatonia is also up, with $175,000 so far, an increase of 1.4%. Thanks to an unusually large, but unexplained, increase earlier in the year, Carmine is still up 16.8% from last year, while Round Top is down 10.9%. The cancellation of the spring antiques events hit both of these towns hard.