Putnam’s March Sales Tax Revenue Dips To State Average

Putnam County’s sales tax revenue dropped to 6.1 percent in March, matching the 6 percent state average.

Mayor Randy Porter said he is pleased with the outcome since he was expecting a 10 percent decrease.

“When you start to look at the county overall, the only decrease we had was inside the city limits of Cookeville where most of your businesses are located,” Porter said. “In Algood, Monterey, and Baxter they were either flat or saw an increases. Out in the county, we were pretty close to flat, we only had about a 1.5 percent increase.”

Monterey was up 11 percent from March last year, and Baxter 26 percent. Porter said he believes the tornado hit close to Baxter, and businesses nearby received an influx of customers needing supplies.

Porter said he’s expecting to see a sharp sales tax decrease for April.

“That’s the million dollar questions, it’s hard to predict,” Porter said. “April is going to be a difficult month I think. I’m guesstimating 15 to 20 percent down.”

Because Cookeville has so many big box stores, Porter said customers from surrounding counties provided a lot of business, even though small businesses had to shut down. He said it will be interesting to see if big box sales counteracted revenue loss.