Butler County finances remain strong as sales taxes continue to trend higher likely due

On Apr 21, 2021

Transfer taxes and recorder fees are two other revenue sources related to real estate, both are up significantly, 33.3% and 63.2% respectively. Combined the county collected $644,181 more than a year ago. Reynolds’ office collects the transfer or conveyance taxes when properties change hands.

“Similar volume of homes are selling it’s the fact that the values are up,” Reynolds said. “We’re staying steady on the number of properties that are selling/transferring between owner and buyer. But as the values go up the conveyance fees increase.”

The largest portion of the county general fund revenues comes from sales tax collections. Holiday shopping produced a huge boost to the general fund this year with $4.7 million, which is the highest monthly collection for the county on the Ohio taxation website, which goes back to 2007. Sales dropped off a bit in January to $3.6 million, which the county received this month. There is a three-month lag in sales tax collections.

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The April sales tax distribution is still higher than the $2.9 million collected a year ago. Miami University Economics Professor Bill Even said this trend isn’t exclusive to Butler County.

“If you look at retail sales in the country as a whole they took a huge dip back in April, from February to April they went from $530 billion down to $400 billion so they fell almost 20%,” Even said. “And then they quickly recovered and actually retail sales nationally are currently above what they were prior to the pandemic kicking in.”

Many experts have credited the numerous stimulus checks flowing into American pockets and extra unemployment cash for healthy sales tax revenues. If that money dries up, County Administrator Judi Boyko says the county is prepared. There is $14 million in the commissioners’ rainy day fund.

“Should the discontinuation of those benefits have an impact on our most robust revenue source sales tax, the board of commissioners have done exactly what it intended to do,” Boyko said. “That was to build a fund balance and budget stabilization that could weather poor economic times.”

Nix predicts the “funny money” coming from Washington already is and will have long-term detrimental effects on everything from sales tax and investment income — which is down 61.7% — to the real estate market and employment.

“What’s frustrating to me is that here locally, we have tried so hard to be good stewards of taxpayers dollars. We’ve made sacrifices for 10-plus years now, paid off general fund debt, went totally lean and went without extras,” Nix said. “And then the federal government turns the cash spigot on across the land, basically rewarding others’ poor behavior with bad policy.”

On the expense side all of the categories are showing a decrease, personnel costs are down 1.5% or $228,385, supplies and materials have dropped $412,993 or 30.2% in the month-to-month comparison for March and capital is down 86.7% from a year ago, among other categories.

Burton said the supplies drop is due largely to reduced postage costs this year compared to last year. Capital projects appear to be down on paper, but she said there are many projects in the pipeline that just haven’t been charged yet.