CHARLESTON, W.Va. — State tax collections missed estimates by $14 million in August mainly because of a decrease in personal income tax collections.
State Deputy Revenue Secretary Mark Muchow said Tuesday personal income tax collections fell short by $5 million last month. He said the ongoing impact of an alternative fuels vehicle tax credit and stagnant withholding tax revenues are the reasons why.
“There’s very little wage and salary growth and with that we’ve had a bit of a decline in withholding tax collections,” Muchow said.
Collections are behind estimates in personal income tax by $32 million for the first two months of the new fiscal year.
Muchow said there’s positive movement in the severance tax category because of increasing natural gas production.
“We’ve begun to see some improvements in the pricing of gas as well and those are two big contributing factors in a growth rate year-to-date of 13.8 percent,” Muchow said.
The Tomblin administration continues to maintain its going to be a tight budget year. Muchow said he sees some revenue growth in the second half of the fiscal year but it will be small, continuing the trend of recent years.
“The last five years our average growth rate per year has only been about .4 percent where as our long term growth rate has been ten times that amount at 4 percent,” Muchow said.