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West Virginia’s General Revenue Fund numbers for July, the first month of Fiscal 2024, were up about 7% from estimates but over 12% down from July 2022.
West Virginia’s General Revenue Fund numbers for July, the first month of Fiscal 2024, were up about 7% from estimates but over 12% down from July 2022.
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WV News) — West Virginia’s General Revenue collections for July 2023, the first month of Fiscal Year 2024, came in $7.7 million above estimates, with total collections of $335 million.
But the boom in severance tax collections that has buoyed recent state revenue numbers took a summer holiday in July 2023. Severance tax collections last month were $3.76 million, or about $23.6 million below the estimate of $27.4 million, and about $50.8 million less than the $54.64 million collected in July 2022. That marked a drop of over 93% from the prior year’s receipts.
That also played a big role in a 12.1% drop of the state’s General Revenue collections from July 2023 vs. the $381.1 million collected in July 2022.
The Governor’s Office said in a news release that “due to a considerable drop in coal and natural gas prices, severance tax income for the month predictably decreased.”
“Although our surplus this month isn’t as high as we’ve seen in the past, what this proves is that we’ve been minding the store properly by keeping our base budget flat,” Gov. Jim Justice said.
“We had phenomenal surpluses last year, and I strongly believe we are going to have a strong surplus this year too, despite the effects of Bidenomics at work with runaway inflation eating into West Virginians’ pockets,” Justice said. “It’s the perfect time to mind the store properly, which is what West Virginians elected me to do and I have done.
“July is consistently our slowest month of the year for collections. Despite widespread calls to significantly increase our base spending budget, similar to what West Virginia has done repeatedly in the past decades, I refused to listen to this nonsense and we chose to maintain a flat budget. This decision ensures that we won’t encounter the same budget shortfalls currently being experienced by states like California and New York.”
Personal Income Tax collections for July were $13.9 million above estimate with collections of $145.6 million. That’s down 9.7% from Personal Income Tax Collections for July 2022 of $161.2 million.
Corporation Net Income Tax collections of $19 million were $8.5 million above estimate and 31.7% ahead of last year’s total of $14.4 million.
The other major sources of General Revenue for July included Consumer Sales Tax, Insurance Premium Tax, and Tobacco Products Excise Tax.
The state collected $93.6 million in Consumer Sales Tax this July vs. $96.3 million in 2022.
Also in July 2023, West Virginia collected $25.5 million in Insurance Premium Tax revenues vs. $24.8 million in July 2022, and $13.7 million in Tobacco Products Excise Tax vs. $13.9 million in July 2022.
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