Carson's taxable sales level off, down for the year

Carson City's taxable sales have leveled off, finishing the fiscal year down 3.2 percent from 2002.

A 21-percent increase in automobile and gasoline sales, Carson City's largest sales tax category, was able to offset decreases in general merchandise sales and other categories caused by the loss of Wal-Mart to Douglas County and closure of the Super Kmart.

Carson City earned $78.1 million in sales tax for June and $861.3 million for the year.

Carson, with a .2 percent decrease, was one of four Nevada counties to post negative numbers for June. The others were Lander, Lincoln and Churchill.

The good news is taxable sales in Nevada finished the fiscal year with an 8.3 percent increase over June 2002. That represents a 5.6 percent increase for the fiscal year.

The bad news is that sales tax collections still finished more than $25 million short of projections used to build the budget.

"This is on top of a similar shortfall in fiscal year 2002," said Gov. Kenny Guinn. "However, recent gains give us some hope that conditions will improve in the months to come -- especially against a backdrop of a rebounding national economy."

Lyon County reported a 36.2 percent increase for June to $30.15 million in taxable sales. That finishes Lyon's year with an 8.4 percent growth rate. The increases there were across the board, from wholesale trade categories to building materials and hardware and miscellaneous retailers, as well as auto dealers and gasoline sales.

Douglas County showed a 9 percent increase in taxable sales for the month to $61.9 million and finished the year 14.1 percent up from fiscal 2002 -- $646.9 million total sales. In June, as most of the past year, the big increases were in retail sales categories and construction.

Washoe County had its best month of the year, growing by 8.5 percent to $510.7 million. Washoe is up 3.5 percent to $5.5 billion in sales for the year.

Clark reported a similar increase in total sales -- 8 percent to $2.2 billion for June. Clark's fiscal year total was up 6.8 percent to $24.5 billion.