With the coronavirus pandemic negatively affecting the country’s economy, Independence County sales tax collections were actually up by almost 3 percent in April, according to Independence County Judge Robert Griffin.
White River Now’s Gary Bridgman talked to Griffin about the judge’s thoughts on April sales tax collections in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis.
“We’re in a period of time that’s difficult to describe where our businesses are,” Griffin said. “We know our small businesses have been hurt during [the COVID-19 crisis], but yet, you look at the county collections of sales tax from April — which the whole world was shut down in April — we still increased 2.8, 2.9 percent.”
Griffin says the city of Batesville’s sales tax collections tell a different story.
“If you look at the collections inside the city of Batesville, on the Batesville-only tax, then you see there was actually a decline of 4.7 percent. And I believe that those disparities are a direct result on our locally owned small businesses that did not see a lot of purchasing during that period of time.”
Judge Griffin said we will have a better idea of how the local economy is being affected by the pandemic when sales tax information through July 2020 is collected.
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