Oconee Has Large Increase In October Sales Tax Collections

For the second time in three months, Oconee County government and Oconee County schools got a pleasant surprise with the release last week of monthly sale tax distributions by the Georgia Department of Revenue.

Revenue was up 41 percent in October over the same month a year ago for the county’s Local Option Sales Tax, Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, and Education Local Option Sales Tax.

The distributions on Nov. 30 were for sales tax collections in October, and for each of the taxes more than $200,000 in additional revenue was collected over October of last year. The exact figures were $223,160 for LOST, $254,495 for SPLOST, and $254,416 for ELOST.

This follows seven months in which tax revenue were off on average more than 5.9 percent from a year ago. September revenue was 5.1 percent lower than in September of 2019.

The August loss of more that 5.0 percent was offset by a bonanza of $413,325 in LOST revenues and $468,516 in SPLOST and ELOST revenues that were discovered via a statewide audit of “a very large company” that was erroneously coding all of its sales tax revenue to the state.

The October extra revenue was not flagged as the result of an audit by the Department of Revenue.

Justin Kirouac, Oconee County administrator, said he asked the Department of Revenue for an explanation and was told that “about 12 companies” submitted sales taxes that were “significantly different” from their receipts sometime between March and September.

These discrepancies were “automatically flagged by DOR system until they could be reconciled,” Kirouac said he was told.

For more on this story, please go to Oconee County Observations.