Virginia’s revenue collections grew 4.1 percent in September from a year ago, Gov. Bob McDonnell announced Wednesday — the sixth month in the past seven that the state has seen year-over-year gains.
Still, on a year-to-date basis, revenue collections fell 1.7 percent, which trails the annual forecast of 2.6 percent growth.
The September revenue increase was driven by increases in individual income tax withholding, as well as corporate income tax and sales tax collections.
So far this year, sales tax collections are down 20 percent, which Finance Secretary Richard Brown attributed to an accelerated sales tax program that required businesses to remit July payments in June 2010. If not for that change, sales tax collections would have grown 4.9 percent and total revenues would have grown by 3.6 percent over the previous year, just slightly below the state’s forecast of 4.2 percent growth..
“While year-to-date revenue growth slightly lags the base forecast, that difference has narrowed over the past few reports,” McDonnell said. “This monthly report has a number of positive components, but it in no way indicates that we have emerged from the economic downturn that has impacted every Virginian over the past two years.”
