Memorandum

City of Lawrence

Finance Department

To:  Dave Corliss, City Manager

From:  Ed Mullins, Finance Director

Date:  December 30, 2009

Subject:  Sales Tax Distribution

The City of Lawrence has recently received its December sales tax distribution.  The distribution is the result of retail sales from mid-October to mid-November.  The distribution of $2,581,008.33 represents a significant increase from the prior year distribution for the same month because of the higher rate.  It also includes $1420 from the Free State Transportation Development District and $1337 from the Oread District.  Because of variations in monthly distributions, primarily due to late filings by vendors, it is advisable to not read too much into disparities between months.  The adjusted December 2009 city 1% sales tax distribution was 1.3% less than the December 2008 distribution.  While twelve months of distributions have been received, the actual 2009 sales tax will not be known until the January distribution is received and that amount accrued. 

A summary of the recent city sales/use tax receipts is shown in the table below.

Sales/Use Tax	Budget	Month	Year to Date	% of Budget
City 1%	13,871,685	1,181,028	13,607,723	98.1%
Infrastructure .3%	2,255,925	353,403	2,389,133	105.9%
Transit .2%	1,503,950	235,602	1,592,757	105.9%
Transit Eq. .05%	375,988	58,900	398,189	105.9%

A spreadsheet showing total monthly sales tax distributions since 2001 is attached.

The amounts from the new sales taxes were calculated by applying the relevant percentages to the sales that occurred after April 1, 2009.