State tax revenue suggests Iowa’s economy remains on an upswing. State tax collections for the past six months were 9.1 percent ahead of the same period a year ago.
“It’s been more than 12 months of growth and that’s always a pleasant surprise,” says Jeff Robinson, a Legislative Services Agency analyst.
It’s been about four years since the state has recorded this kind of growth in tax collections.
“Despite the fact that the U.S. recession had started, officially, in December of 2007, by April and well into the summer of 2008 we were doing pretty good in Iowa and we have now reached a point where we’re going that good again with our growth rate in tax revenue,” Robinson says.
State tax collections rose 6.4 percent in December. In the month of November, state tax collections grew by 7.7 percent and Robinson says that doesn’t really account for all the holiday sales.
“Sales tax, which is where we pick up holiday sales — a retailer collects the tax from the people in the state, but they don’t remit it to the state probably until the next month — until December, so there’s really no way for good holiday sales to start showing up in November tax deposits,” Robinson says. “Mostly you start to see that in December and, some of that, into January.”
December’s sales tax receipts were 3.1 percent higher than in December, 2011.