Sales taxes dip in second quarter

St. Mary Parish sales and use tax collections continued to dip in the second quarter, according to the most recent report.
April collections totaled about $3.6 million, down 16.1 percent from April 2014 collections of roughly $4.3 million.
“When your collections are that far below last year, it stings a little bit,” St. Mary Parish Sales and Use Tax Director Jeffery LaGrange said.
Sales tax revenues have decreased six consecutive months dating to November 2014. Before that, June 2014 through September 2014 collections were also all lower than the previous year’s collections.
The slump in oil prices continues to cause a slowdown in area industry, LaGrange said.
St. Mary Parish Sales and Use Tax Department officials are working to collect delinquent sales taxes from lots of financial audits that LaGrange hopes will help local government budgets, he said.
April hotel-motel sales tax revenues came in at $55,198 in April, a decrease of about 6.8 percent from April 2014 collections of $59,240. Hotel-motel sales tax collections were down 16.2 percent in March and 10.2 percent for the first quarter of 2015.
Morgan City’s 0.3 percent road royalty sales tax brought in $79,489 in April, bringing the year-to-date total road royalty collections to $323,041.
At the end of March, first-quarter sales and use tax collections totaled $10.86 million, down from the $11.68 million collected in the first quarter of 2014. Collections for March alone were $3.25 million, a decrease from March 2014’s collections of $3.3 million.
From talking to other people, LaGrange expects the oilfield downturn to last another year, he said.
St. Mary Parish Economic Development Director Frank Fink said, “We’re off to a bad start in the second quarter.” Still, some areas of the parish economy are doing well, including carbon black plants and several shipyards, Fink said.
“But the oilfield is certainly dragging things down,” Fink said.
The recent “small surge” in oil prices to $60 to $61 a barrel was not enough to make a difference in the economy, Fink said. The parish economy will be much more comfortable when oil prices reach $70 to $75 per barrel, Fink said.
St. Mary Parish has seen some layoffs throughout the parish but not the major layoffs one would anticipate with the downturn in the oilfield, Fink said. Once layoffs start occurring, reductions in automobile sales and department store sales also decline, Fink said.
“It has a trickling effect throughout the economy,” Fink said.
The full impact of the economic downturn has yet to be seen in parish sales and use tax collections because the data shows purchases made one to two months ago, Fink said.
Once the area sees an increase in the number of wells being drilled, Fink believes that will be the first indication that an economic turnaround is beginning, Fink said.
The following occupational licenses were filed in April: city of Morgan City, $17,747; St. Mary Parish, $10,439; city of Franklin, $3,120; city of Patterson, $2,358; town of Berwick, $553; and town of Baldwin, $524.

This story was written by Zachary Fitzgerald of The Daily Review staff. Reach him at zfitzgerald@daily-review.com