According to Archuleta County Finance Director Larry Walton, the total sales tax collection for July 2015 was $918,190.72, which is $151,860 or 20.1 percent higher than the same month in the previous year.
Walton explained that for this year, every month has contained a certain amount of back-tax collections, mostly from 2013 and 2014, but the size of these anomalous collections has steadily declined from $98,000 in January to $8,195 in July. Even with that amount factored out, July was still up 19 percent over the year.
The data in Walton’s report only goes back to 2004, but it is more than likely that July’s collections set another record, being the first time that more than $900,000 was generated in a single month.
Year-to-date collections for 2015 sales tax are $787,104 or 20 percent ahead of 2014, but Walton clarified that $233,395 of that is from back taxes, so the real growth rate so far this year is actually 14.1 percent.
All sales tax generated within the county, regardless of whether it comes from a business within the town limits or not, is split evenly between the town and county. However, the Colorado Department of Revenue continues to disburse all of the local sales tax revenue to the county, despite repeated requests from the town to directly receive its share, which turned out to be $459,095.36 for July.
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