Oconee, Clarke See Big Increases In Sales Tax Revenues

Oconee County, as well as Clarke County, got amazingly good news with the release of the sales tax distributions for August.

With the addition of revenue from an audit that spanned several years of an unidentified company, sales tax revenues for August increased by two-thirds over a year ago for Oconee County and for Oconee County Schools.

In Clarke County, the increase in sales tax revenue from August of last year was more than 40 percent for the unified city-county government and for the county’s schools.

The audit added about a half million in revenues for each of Oconee County’s sales taxes, and Oconee County now has a 6 percent growth in sales tax revenue in the first eight months of 2012. Without the audit, the county would have been down 3 percent in revenue over a year ago.

The situation is the same for Oconee County Schools.

In Clarke County, the increase of more than $1 million in revenue from the audit has converted a just less than 4 percent loss into a more than 2 percent gain, both for the unified government and for the county’s schools.

Justin Kirouac, Oconee County administrator, said is not possible to know what impact the audit will have on county revenues in the future, but “It SHOULD be safe to say that the anticipated monthly returns will be higher going forward.”

For more on the story, please click through to Oconee County Observations.