Sales tax collections down for 3rd straight month

April marked the third straight month that St. Mary Parish sales and use tax collections have been slightly below the same month of 2018.

But the most recent parish employment statistics were encouraging as St. Mary added about 300 jobs from December 2018 to March, and the jobless rate decreased by 1.2 percentage points from January to March.

Business has been slow at some retail businesses, but there is a lot of new capital investment in the parish, said Parish Economic Development Director Frank Fink.

Fink expects that investment to eventually start showing up in the sales and use tax collections.

“The good news is the jobs are increasing. And as those jobs increase and if they continue to increase, I think we’ll see a turnaround in the sales tax,” Fink said.

Sales and use tax collections totaled $3.22 million in April, a 2.1 percent decrease from the $3.29 million collected during April 2018. Audits brought in $72,378 in collections for April compared to $75,008 for the same month of 2018.

All areas of collections saw small decreases during April, including retail, automobile, drug stores, hotel and all areas of industry are all showing small decreases, said Jeff LaGrange, St. Mary Parish sales and use tax director.

Hotel sales tax collections of $40,661 were down 7 percent from the $43,704 collected in April 2018.

Overall in the first quarter, collections brought in $9.25 million, a 1.4 percent rise from the $9.12 million collected in 2018’s first quarter. Hotel collections of $118,393 were up 3.5% from the $114,364 collected in 2018’s first quarter.

That quarter’s increase in collections was due to a strong January when total collections climbed 15.7 percent and 4.9 percent not counting audits. Officials collected $3.92 million for January compared to $3.39 million for January 2018. Hotel tax collections rose 2.5 percent from $35,422 to $36,295 in January.

However, collections went down in February as officials collected $2.74 million, a 10.5 percent decrease from the $3.06 million collected in February 2018. Excluding collections made as a result of financial audits, collections decreased just 1.2 percent.

March collections totaled $2.59 million, down 3.2 percent from the $2.67 million collected in March 2018. Without collections from audits, collections dropped 1.1 percent.

St. Mary Parish’s unemployment rate decreased to 5.1% in March from 5.7% in February, according to the latest not seasonally adjusted statistics from the Louisiana Workforce Commission.

The number of employed residents rose by 152 people during March, going from 18,668 in February to 18,820. The parish workforce, the sum of employed residents and those looking for work, rose slightly from 19,799 people to 19,825 people.

February’s unemployment rate was 5.7% compared to 6.3% in January. Also in January, 18,529 people were employed compared to 18,518 employed residents in December 2018 when the jobless rate was 5.7%.