Missouri revenue increases 2 percent through November

JEFFERSON CITY -- Missouri tax revenue are increasing, but will need to grow even faster to help account for an error made last year, state officials said Friday.

The state Office of Administration reported that revenue through November increased 2 percent from last year, or from $2.78 billion to $2.84 billion this year. State budget director Linda Luebbering said Friday that state revenue now will need to grow by just under 3 percent during the 2012 budget that started in July for Missouri to keep pace with its budget expectations. That is because state officials last year accidentally reported collecting $66.6 million more in general revenue than what actually came in.

Less revenue collected last year means that Missouri would need to bring in more this year to offset that.

Luebbering said the problem arose after a change in the accounting for federal money for Medicaid that is received by the Department of Mental Health. Last year, the funds wrongly were counted as new general revenue.

So far in the current year's budget, Missouri collections from sales taxes are up 3.4 percent compared to last year and individual income taxes have increased by 2.7 percent. However, corporate income tax collections are down 10.7 percent.

Luebbering said some of that decrease could be because Missouri's tax code is tied to federal policies, but that officials are not sure why corporate collections have fallen so much this year.