South Dakota Bureau of Finance and Management (BFM) released the February 2020 general fund receipt dashboard. Through 7 months, total actual ongoing receipts were $6.8 million more than the original adopted FY2020 estimate. It is important to note that much of the $6.8M difference is due to Investment Income coming in far better than anticipated.
While the strong sales tax numbers are encouraging, they are mostly making up for weakness in the Insurance Company Tax and Unclaimed Property revenue sources that are likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
Key Findings:
- Sales tax was up 9.4% compared to a year ago (page 1). YTD, Sales and Use tax is 1.2% higher than the adopted estimate (page 5) and 1.1% higher than the Governor’s revised estimate (page 8). Much of this is due to the later Thanksgiving holiday pushing more Christmas sales activity into December, including Cyber Monday. Sales and Use tax collections occur one month after the sales occur, so January collections reflect December sales.
- Lottery was up 7.5% compared to a year ago (page 1). YTD it is up 0.5% or $0.3M compared to the adopted estimate (page 5) and 0.7% or $0.5M higher than the Governor’s revised estimate (page 8).
- Contractors Excise Tax was up 3.5% compared to a year ago. YTD, it is up 5.9% or $0.7M compared to the Adopted estimate, and 4.6% or $3.8M compared to the Governor’s revised estimate.
- Insurance company tax was down 12.4% or $1.6M compared to a year ago. YTD, it is down 8.8% or $5.2M compared to the adopted estimate and 6.8% or $3.9M compared to the Governor’s revised estimate. This is in part due to the Partners in Education tax credit now being fully utilized.
To view the SD BFM Financial Metrics and Dashboards.
