San Marcos sees decrease in sales tax allocation

San Marcos saw a nearly 30% sales tax allocation decrease in April compared to last year. 

State Comptroller Glenn Hegar distributed $677.3 million in local sales tax allocations for April to cities, counties, transit systems and special purpose tax districts. The comptroller’s office stated that this was a 3.5% statewide decrease compared to April 2020. 

San Marcos received a sales tax payment of $1,833,623.53 this period — a 29.83% decrease compared to last April when it received a payment of $2,613,313.97.

While San Marcos saw a decrease compared to last year, most municipalities in Hays County saw an increase in their respective allocations. 

Kyle received a payment of $732,787.22, which was up slightly over 15% from 2020, when it received $634,908.41 from the state. Buda saw an allocation of $637,219.44 — an 8.47% increase from last April.

Dripping Springs was paid $232,221.38, which was up 8.83% from last April. 

Uhland saw the largest allocation increase with a 93.27% jump from this time last year. Uhland received an allocation of $37,833.71 compared to last April’s $19,522.49. 

Niederwald was paid $4,728.76 — an increase of 18.51% compared to the prior year. The City of Hays received a payment of $1,836.10, which was an increase of 30.11% from April 2020. 

Woodcreek saw an increase of just under 1% at 0.89% after it was allocated $5,320.85 this April. 

Wimberley and Mountain City both saw decreases. Wimberley received a payment of $69,541.18 — a decrease of 0.23%. Mountain City was allocated $1,383.65 — a 12.69% decrease compared to last April. 

Additionally, the state’s sales tax revenue in March was $2.63 billion, which marked a 2% decrease from last March. 

The comptroller’s office said the majority of March sales tax revenue is based on sales made in February and remitted to the agency in March. The due date for state taxes and fees to be reported was Feb. 22 but was extended by a week because of the effects of the winter storm. 

“Adjusted for the effects of delayed payments due to the late February winter weather disaster, March state sales tax collections continued to slump below levels of a year ago,” Hegar said. “Collections from all major sectors other than retail trade and restaurants continued to decline, led by depressed receipts from oil- and gas-related businesses.

“Some of the trends established during the COVID-19 pandemic continued, as remittances from online retailers, building materials stores and sporting goods stores continued to show strong growth over the previous year. Clothing and accessories stores and furniture stores showed declines, likely due to store closures caused by widespread power outages. Tax receipts from restaurants were up over the previous year’s levels for the first time since onset of the pandemic, but the increase reflects the first month affected by the pandemic, as restaurant activity began to slow in the latter half of February 2020.”