Carson City taxable sales up 11.8 percent

While statewide taxable sales were up a solid 5.5 percent in October, Carson City had a banner month, growing sales 11.8 percent to $69.65 million.

The number was pretty much driven by the 9.4 percent increase in car sales — Carson’s largest sales tax generator — to $21.99 million.

But there was a long list of other categories that contributed to the increase.

The capital saw a 55.4 percent increase in building material sales to $9 million and a 5.3 percent increase in food services and drinking places to $8.26 million.

But Carson’s second largest tax generator, general merchandise stores, dropped 6.1 percent to $11.6 million.

Nonmetallic Metal Product Manufacturing was up 399.9 percent to $1.19 million and there were significant increases in Wood Product Manufacturing (37 percent to $220,600), Specialty Trade Contractors (33.3 percent to $648,657) and Miscellaneous Manufacturing (34.7 percent to $403,223).

City Finance Director Nancy Paulson said the only month of this fiscal year that wasn’t a double-digit increase was August when taxable sales rose 7.2 percent. For the first four months of the fiscal year, Carson is up 10.7 percent.

“It’s a good trend,” she said. At this rate, she said Consolidated Tax receipts for FY2016 are going to be 10 percent higher than the $23.5 million the city budgeted.

The C-Tax consists of the cigarette, liquor, government services and real property transfer taxes plus the basic and supplemental City County Relief Taxes.

That money is apportioned out to the counties by a state formula.

The added money, she said, will help rebuild Carson’s stabilization funds and hopefully provide some money for much needed maintenance, capital improvements and equipment purchases.

In Churchill County, the story was the Utilities category which jumped 830 percent from $245,538 to $2.29 million and Heavy and Civil Engineering which went from a negative $8,256 a year ago to $1.2 million in the black this October.

Auto sales helped out with a 30 percent increase to just more than $4 million. In addition, Food Services and Drinking Places posted a 40.6 percent increase to $3.1 million.

Those gains, however, were offset somewhat by the Nonmetallic Mineral Product Manufacturing category that went from a positive $93,181 to a negative $1 million this October.

The final result was still a 9.1 percent increase to $24.39 million in Churchill.

But Food Services and Drinking Places rose 12.6 percent to $11.88 million.

Storey County reported a huge percentage increase in October — 78.6 percent — much of which can be attributed to the purchase of equipment at the Tesla plant. But there are several other companies also building or expanding at the Reno Tahoe Industrial Center. Taxable sales totaled $15.96 million in Storey.

Washoe County too had a strong month, reporting total taxable sales of $621.2 million. That’s 10.4 percent higher than the previous October. Washoe reported double digit increases in a variety of categories including wholesale durable goods, Eating and Drinking Places, auto sales and building material sales. Washoe is up 9.7 percent for the first four months of this fiscal year.

The only parts of western Nevada not in the black for October were Douglas and Lyon County. In Lyon, total sales dipped 6.4 percent to $31.86 million because of decreases in a laundry list of mostly smaller categories.

In Douglas County, total taxable sales were down by 7.2 percent to $50.6 million. Building Materials sales accounted for a good chunk of the loss, totaling $2.78 million — half the previous October’s total of $5.5 million. Other contributors to the decrease were auto sales that fell 6.2 percent to $2.2 million and wholesale durable goods, which fell 35.2 percent to $2.89 million.

Statewide, taxable sales are up 5.2 percent over the first four months of the fiscal year.

Food Services and Drinking Places, far and away the largest taxable sales category because of the southern Nevada tourist industry, reported just more than $1 billion in sales. Next highest is auto sales at $486.5 million – less than half of what tourism brings in.