AUGUST REVENUESNASHVILLE – State revenue collections for August were less than the budgeted estimate, but above collections for the same month last year. Finance and Administration Commissioner Dave Goetz today reported that overall collections for August were $809.2 million, an increase of 5.29% over August 2006 collections. "Collections were less than budgeted for the first month of the new fiscal year, but this is only one month of figures and certainly does not represent a downward trend,” Goetz said. "As we expected, tobacco tax revenues are under collected because of the large number of cigarette wholesale companies that took advantage of the opportunity to buy tax stamps before the cigarette tax increase went into effect." On an accrual basis, August is the first month in the 2007-2008 fiscal year. August collections were $19.0 million less than the budgeted estimate. The general fund was under collected by $18.0 million and the four other funds were under collected by $1.0 million. Sales tax collections were $15.7 million less than the estimate for August. The August growth rate was 2.41%. Franchise and excise taxes were $10.9 million above the budgeted estimate of $33.7 million. Gasoline and motor fuel collections decreased by 1.40% and were $2.0 million below the budgeted estimate of $72.3 million. Tobacco tax collections for the month were under collected by $14.1 million, but still $6.8 million above tobacco tax collections for August 2006. All other taxes were over collected by a net $1.9 million. The budgeted revenue estimates for 2007-2008 were adopted by the first session of the 105th General Assembly in June of 2007. |
