Cape County sales-tax receipts down from same time last year

January sale-tax receipts in Cape Girardeau County, which were based to a large extent on December taxable sales, were nearly 10% lower than the same month last year.

The $612,957.74 the county received this month from the Missouri Department of Revenue was the county’s lowest January sales-tax total since 2018 and was the second-lowest January payment since 2014.

But County Treasurer Roger Hudson isn’t concerned.

“I’m not getting too excited over just one month,” he said. “It could be they (the Department of Revenue) had an earlier cut off last month due to Christmas and the holiday season.”

An additional round of stimulus checks recently issued as part of the federal government’s COVID-19 economic recovery efforts “should help” and will probably have an impact on upcoming sales-tax receipts, Hudson added.

January’s sales tax revenue was more than $66,000, or 9.8%, lower than the $679,501.71 the county received in January last year, much of it generated by seasonal retail sales in December 2019.

From 2005 through this month, the county’s January sales-tax receipts were as follows:

• 2005 — $476,081.92
• 2006 — $531,699.82
• 2007 — $503,218.93
• 2008 — $536,428.97
• 2009 — $553,686.93
• 2010 — $587,184.27
• 2011 — $489,945.61
• 2012 — $582,951.12
• 2013 — $505,809.94
• 2014 — $545,968.59
• 2015 — $635,084.37
• 2016 — $644,574.82
• 2017 — $691,765.74
• 2018 — $526,401.30
• 2019 — $674,670.38
• 2020 — $679,507.71
• 2021 — $612,957.74

For all of 2020, the county’s half-cent sales tax generated a record $7,791,131.24, about 5.6% more than the county’s previous sales tax record of $7,376,389.06 set in 2019.

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