MANSFIELD — The Christmas holiday shopping season got off to a good start in Richland County in November 2023.
At least in terms of sales tax collection.
Richland County Commissioner Tony Vero said Thursday the county’s sales tax numbers in February, which reflect November receipts, were 7.59 percent better than in February of 2023.
Sales tax is reported three months later through the Ohio Department of Taxation.
It was welcome news for Vero and fellow commissioners Cliff Mears and Darrell Banks.
“If you go back to June of 2023, we have had seven of the last eight months of negative (year-over-year) sales tax performance,” Vero said. “January of 2024 was 1.3 percent worse than January 2023.”
Adding the first two months of the year together (reflecting October and November sales), the county is about 3 percent better than during the same two months in 2023.
“We had projected (in the county’s 2024 budget) to be 3.5 percent worse on the year (for January/February),” Vero said.
“So we’re outpacing where we thought we would be. I felt our projections were on point, considering we had a negative quarter of 3 percent in QF of 2023,” he said.
Vero said Richland County has fared better than state sales tax projections around Ohio.
“We had a good month. We’re happy. But I am not ready to say we’re going to be on a positive trend for the rest of the year, especially because of the statewide trends and our (budget) expectations at this moment,” he said.
He said it’s difficult to pinpoint what may be driving the sales numbers because the state has still not begun to break down internet sales revenues by county.
“This is a sign we had a healthy November and let’s hope that the December spending and March receipts will be similar. We felt Black Friday sales were pretty good and we will know more in a few weeks (how December went),” Vero said.
County administrator Andrew Keller said it’s “encouraging” news for commissioners.
“This board has a pro-business, pro-market philosophy. And so to see Richland County thriving economically, that’s why we’re here,” Keller said.