Budget chief: Revenue projections still on track despite soft August

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The state's budget director remains optimistic that the state's revenue collections are turning around with a modest rise in the August revenue collections.

Figures released by Linda Luebbering's office show August revenue collections up 0.8 percent compared to last August. For the year, overall revenue figures are still running behind last fiscal year by 1.4 percent.

Luebbering's office predicted a 2.3 percent growth in revenue for the fiscal year, and she said the August figures indicate a slow uptake.

"We're a little bit better than we were before," Luebbering said. "We're making that slow progress that we were hoping for on the revenue side."

One bright spot in the report is a 3.6 percent increase in August 2010 collections of individual income taxes over the year-earlier period. They are up 1.7 percent for the year, to $751.3 million.

"We've had a little bit of job growth every month for the last six months; not a lot, but a little, and that's all positive news," Luebbering said.

Sales tax collections, however, are down for the year by 4.2 percent at $305.2 million. And even though they are up 0.3 percent for the August period, the budget office didn't get the bump it hoped for.

"Typically August is a big sales tax month because of back-to-school sales, the fact that we really didn't see that much on the sales tax side associated with back-to-school is disappointing," Luebbering said.

Despite more Missourians getting jobs, they are still being cautious with their money, she said.

Corporate income taxes collections -- a measure of business activity --were on a slow rise for several months, but fell by more than 24 percent in the August period.

Luebbering attributed the drop to a timing issue that causes business tax collections to "clump up," as Luebbering said, at certain times of the year.

Overall, corporate income and corporate franchise tax collections are up 0.1 percent over last year.