2020 sales tax revenue tops 2019 total
Even amid pandemic, amount collected last year just 1% below initial forecast
KINGSTON, N.Y. » Despite a pandemic that upended Ulster County’s economy, the county managed to end 2020 with sales tax revenues just shy of predictions for the year and slightly above what was collected in 2019.
Ulster County took in $127,305,759 in sales tax revenue last year, an amount that is $1,255,664, or slightly less than 1%, below the $128,561,423 anticipated in the 2020 budget, according to press releases issued by County Executive Pat Ryan and Comptroller March Gallagher.
Ryan said the county’s 2020 sales tax revenue topped the 2019 total by $10,175.
Gallagher said Ulster County actually would have finished 2020 well above what the county budgeted if not for a move by the state to “divert” about $1.52 million in sales tax collected by the county to two state programs.
“It feels like a smack in the face to have those diversions happening during a pandemic,” Gallagher said Wednesday. “It’s unfair and it’s cost shifting.”
Gallagher said the state
kept $775,011 in sales tax revenue generated by the county in 2020 for the state Aid and Incentives to Municipalities program. In 2019, the state diverted $638,160 from the county for the program. Funding from the program provides state aid to cities towns and villages outside of New York City.
Additionally, the comptroller said, the state in 2020 implemented a new Distressed Providers Diversion, which resulted in it retaining an additional $774,543 in county sales taxes. That program, Gallagher said, is supposed to provide funding to distressed health care facilities, though she said the
state has provided no clear explanation of how that money will be distributed or used.
“It’s basically-burden shifting and more unfunded mandates for the county,” she said.
Ulster County and New York state each levy a 4% sales tax on goods and services sold in the county. The sales tax is collected by vendors and submitted to the state, which then issues checks to counties.
Sales tax revenues collected by hotels, motels and other travel accommodations in Ulster County between March and November 2020 were down a dramatic 43% from the same period a year earlier, while taxes collected on gasoline sales and at restaurants and other eating establishments were down 23% and 22%, respectively, Gallagher said.
Sales taxes collected on electronic shopping and mail-order purchases, meanwhile, were up a whopping 124%, while sales taxes collected on purchases of building supplies were up 21%.
Sales taxes collected on purchases made at grocery stores were up 12% over the same nine-month period in 2019.
Year-over-year county sales tax revenues were down 7.8%, or $5.8 million, through September, Ryan said Wednesday. But the county regained lost ground between October 2020 and February 2021, experiencing an increase of 11.37%, or $5.9 million.
Ryan, in his press release, attributed the resurgence to federal stimulus payments and the economic efforts taken by the county in response to the pandemic.