Sales Tax returns for April
Hawkins sales tax up;
defies general downturn
By JOHN SPARKS
Sales tax returns for April 2009 for Hawkins continued to defy downturns in national, state and county trends with increases for the past four months running. For the first four months of 2009, Hawkins sales tax returns are up by 23.92 percent over the same period in 2008. The results run counter to that in all of the other five municipalities in Wood County which overall stand at a loss of 4.54 percent over the four-month period.
The sales tax funds are collected by local merchants, sent to the Texas Comptroller along with the state's six and-a-quarter cents tax on each dollar of retail purchase. Hawkins' local portion-one-and-one-half cents/dollar-is then returned two months later (February retailer collections returned in April). Merchants in the unincorporated county areas collect a half-cent sales tax on each dollar sale with the local portion going into the county's general fund.
Wood County's retailers in unincorporated areas of the county also showed performance improvement with a loss of just 0.22 percent in sales tax returns for April compared with the same month in 2008.
Hawkins sales tax returns in the most recent monthly report for April were $15,880.59 compared with $14,669.30 for April 2008. Hawkins returns are distributed to the two budgets supported by the sales tax, with approximately $10,587.06 deposited into the city's general fund and the remaining $5,293.53, representing a half-cent sales tax, into the Hawkins Community Development Corporation budget.
Comparative figures for sales tax returns for the month of April (as collected in February) for each city and the county follow with commentary furnished by Gary McKinley, executive director of the Wood County Industrial Commission:
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