CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Gov. Jim Justice and state Revenue Secretary Dave Hardy released the state’s revenue numbers a day earlier than usual Friday and those numbers showed the state continuing to collect more in tax revenue than previously estimated.
Overall collections for October exceeded estimates by $20.4 million. Four months into the fiscal year the state is running ahead of estimates by $110.8 million. Officials numbers won’t come in until the final day of the month’s collection which is Saturday.
The fiscal year got off to a good head start when the Justice administration reported a revenue surplus of $44 million in July fueled by Justice’s move to push back the due date for state taxes from April 15 to July 15 because of the pandemic.
Hardy said Friday said two key components of the revenue collections, Consumer Sales Tax and Personal Income Tax, are performing better than expected.
“We’ve gone through four months of this fiscal year, in the middle of this pandemic, and still our Consumer Sales Tax, which is very, very important to the state’s revenue, is up 6.1%, 6% for the month of October,” Hardy said.
Personal Income Tax is 17% ahead of last year after four months of the current budget year.
Those two taxes makes up approximately 75 percent of the state’s revenues.
The revenue collections have also benefit from the $3 billion the state has received in federal funding linked to the pandemic including $1.25 billion from the CARES Act and the nearly $1.75 billion in targeted (bucket) grants for various entities.