Every month the city receives information from the Tennessee Department of Revenue regarding the collection and allocation of the local option sales tax. This is of great importance to us as local sales taxes are the second largest source of funding that we have to pay for traditional governmental services such as police, fire, parks and recreation, and others.
For the month of June, a total of $3.9 million in net sales taxes were collected in Sullivan County. The amount collected in Bristol was $735,000, or approximately 19% of the county total.
The tax is distributed with the first 50% going to schools within the county on a formula using average daily attendance, with the remaining 50% payable to the government in which the sale occurred. So for the month, $367,000 went to support education and $367,000 came to us.
The good news with this latest monthly report is that collections are up 9% in Bristol over the same month last year. The bad news is that we are still below last year collections in total by approximately 1% over the first eleven months of the fiscal year.
Keep your fingers crossed that local sales tax collections will grow in the future. We are.
