Sales Tax revisited

I saw Wal*Mart Store Manager Roy Reif downtown this afternoon. He mentioned the comments I made at the Chamber Coffee Tuesday morning about the sales tax revenue.

We talked about what the sales tax means in real dollar sales. You might notice I changed I made to yesterday's blog as a result. I said something like the $1,496,869 revenue came from $20.5 million in retail sales. (Divide the $1,496,869 by the sales tax rate of7.30% and you get $20,505,055.)

If you looked at my numbers yesterday, you might have known I was wrong. Our sales tax revenue is a 1% city tax and a 1/2% county-wide tax. The two generally split $1 million for the 1% tax and $500,000 for the county-wide tax. The retail sales that would generate $1,000,000 of city sales would be ($1,000,000/.01) $100,000,000. One hundred million dollars of retail sales. The same caluclation goes for the county-wide sales tax ($500,000/.005 = $100,000,000.

That amount is still some serious change!