City sales tax hits highest monthly total on record
With a lot of potential projects being looked at, city of Imperial officials had big smiles last week after receiving the August city sales tax report.
The NE Dept. of Revenue’s allocation to the city for August was $51,660.08, the highest on record since the 1% city sales tax started in April 2007.
The previous high was two years ago in October 2019 when that month reached $51,467.27.
Included in the August month’s total were $8,348.85 that came from motor vehicle sales tax for those registered in Imperial. By law, those funds go directly into the city’s street department.
The rest is divided equally in the city’s two sales tax funds—one for economic development (LB 840) and one for community development.
Tyler Pribbeno, the city’s Community Development Director, said it’s hard to know what caused the big spike in the receipts this August.
Of course, August means the Chase County Fair and back-to-school purchases, so he believes those were factors.
The fact there was no fair in August 2020 lends more credibility to the week-long event being a big determinant for the increase this year after the fair returned with all of its events, he noted.
Due to recent changes in the law, Pribbeno said online sellers are also being required across the board now to report their sales so both the state and local sales taxes can be applied.
That wasn’t the case before.
However, it’s hard to tell how much of the sales tax income locally comes from the online sales because those sales are not split out in the totals the city receives, Pribbeno said.
The only major purchases the state does split out on the city’s revenue report are for vehicles because of the requirement that those funds go to the street department.
However, looking at August this year and August 2020, the income from vehicle sales is nearly the same—$8,348.85 this year and $8,414.92 last year.
Looking back five years, sales tax income for August has climbed steadily every year.