Maragos eyes $71.7M drop in county sales tax revenue

Adam Lidgett

Nassau County will end this year with $71.7 million less than budgeted in sales tax revenue, County Comptroller George Maragos said in a statement Monday. 

But the decline of 6.2 percent in sales tax revenue is less severe than the county had feared earlier, Maragos said in the statement. 

Maragos said the slump is due to a leveling off of economic activity in the area during the third and fourth quarter of the year. 

“The decline in the first half of the year can reasonably be attributed to the end of the spending boost for Sandy recovery,” Maragos said in a statement. “Stripping out the Sandy boost however, the first two quarters represent almost no growth from the first half of 2012, two years earlier, and only 2 percent full year growth over 2012.”

Maragos said in the statement that this year is the first year since 2009 that sales tax revenues declined. He also said it is the first time sales tax revenues declined during a period of economic expansion.

Sales tax, he noted, is the biggest source of revenue for the county, accounting for  about 40 percent of the money it receives.

“Normally, the county would have expected to be 7 percent higher in 2014 than 2012 assuming the historic sales tax average growth of 3.5 percent annually during economic expansion,” Maragos said. “Flat consumer income growth and shifts to online purchasing continues to look like the new norm causing uncertainty in future sales tax growth that will require more conservative budgeting.”

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