Sixth penny tax follows projections

Collections for the specific purpose tax, also known as the sixth-penny tax, are meeting their projected expectations according to Robb Slaughter, Sweetwater County Treasurer.

Voters approved the tax collection in 2012, voting for more than $79 million going to various infrastructure work and construction of Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County’s Medical Office Building.

Slaughter said the tax is coming in at an average of $1.51 million a month, just $10,000 more than its projected revenue.

At 17 months after the start of the tax, Slaughter said it’s on track to terminate at about 44 months. As of Nov. 1, the tax has generated $24,642,595.57.

The most the tax has generated in one month was $1.6 million, while the least it brought it was $1.3 million.

While some would expect the upcoming holiday shopping season to lead to a increase in tax revenue generated, Slaughter said sales taxes don’t usually follow trends logic would suggest exist.

“For some reason, we don’t see those upticks we anticipated,” Slaughter said.

It isn’t just anticipated increases in holiday shopping that don’t show in the tax collection, but other anticipated upticks such as having a number of temporary workers for the Bridger Power Plant emissions projects don’t make themselves known in the tax collection figures as well.

“Sales tax is a very strange beast,” Slaughter said.

Once the sales tax collection nears it’s full amount, Slaughter will contact the Wyoming Department of Revenue to have it shut off.

However, because the county has to wait until the full amount is collected and due to a 60-day period between when the tax is cut by the department of revenue and when retailers cease the tax, an over collection will occur.

Due to the large amount being collected, Slaughter the said the over collection amount will be fairly small, as opposed to the amount collected when the tax was being used to fund $9.2 million for the Sweetwater County Child Developmental Center. He said the over collection amount will be divided up amongst between local governments according to the percentage of the tax they receive.