City Manager Tom Ivester shared the released sales tax numbers for June last week. The sales tax is up by four percent over this time last year, and the use tax was up by 22 percent. The total sales tax for the month was $1,241,55.65, compared the FY 22 sales tax at $1,190,626. The year-to-date total is $14,636,508.34, which is up by six percent from the FY 22 numbers.
When comparing Elk City’s sales tax with surrounding towns with similar populations, Elk City’s taxes are up by 4.3 percent over last year. The next town with comparable gains over last year was Clinton with a gain of 3.5 percent and followed by Weatherford with 2.7 percent gain over last year. The remainder of the towns showed negative gains over the previous year. Those include Altus with 5.3 percent loss, Woodward with 5.7 percent loss, Sayre with 14.7 percent loss, Yukon had a 4.7 percent loss, and El Reno came in with a 6.9 percent loss.
All of the towns suffered a loss in sales tax over the last month. The results were as follows Elk City with 2.2 percent loss, Clinton had 1.7 percent loss, Weatherford had 5.8 percent loss, Altus suffered an 11.5 percentage loss, Woodward came in at a 9.2 percent loss, Sayre suffered 22.4 percent loss over last month, Yukon had 6.1 percent loss, and El Reno had 8.6 percent loss.
The only community that reported more sales tax revenue was Yukon with $2,285,581 in the month of June (2023) compared to Elk City’s $1,241,556 sales tax income. The next two closest in sales tax revenue were Weatherford with $1,018,287, and then Woodward with $1,059,047, followed by Altus with $1,018,287. The least amount of sales tax revenue was in Sayre with $134,968.
When comparing the sales tax rate among Elk City, Clinton, and Weatherford, all had 4.5 percent city sales tax. Altus has 4.13 percent sales tax, Woodward has four percent sales tax, as does Sayre and Yukon. El Reno’s sales tax sits at 4.125 percentage.
The comparison between other towns similar in size to Elk City seems to be valuable because it shows the community’s commitment to spend their money locally. It could also represent how the people of Elk City feel about the town and investing their faith in the local merchants.
