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Missouri's state income picture continues to improve

St. Louis Public Radio | By Jo Mannies
Published February 4, 2013 at 8:42 AM CST

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 4, 2013 - The state of Missouri’s finances is continuing to improve, with state Budget Director Linda Luebbering reporting that the current fiscal year’s revenue collections have increased 9.5 percent so far, compared to a year ago.

That’s well above predictions and sets the stage for Gov. Jay Nixon to release some of the $100 million-plus in budget restrictions that he had imposed earlier when the state’s budget picture wasn’t looking so rosy.

Current fiscal year-to-date collections are running almost $300 million higher than a year ago.

But Luebbering cautions that some added income may be temporary and likely will go back out as tax refunds when Missourians file their state income tax returns for 2012.  Those filings haven’t begun yet because the federal government has been late in sending out the federal income tax forms as a result of the “fiscal cliff’’ haggling in Congress.

As a result, she warns not to put too much stock in the net general revenue collections for January, which are up 18.4 percent compared to those for January 2012, from $658.5 million to $779.5 million.

Nonetheless, Luebbering said the latest figures are “good news,’’ especially the continued jump in individual income tax collections.

The news was so good, in fact, that shortly after Luebbering's report came out, Nixon announced he was releasing $8.4 million to higher education institutions across the state. He also released $100,000 for the Missouri State Historical Society, housed at the University of Missouri, and $480,000 to fund three programs for foster care and children in need.

The bulk of the money, nearly $4 million, went to the University of Missouri. Community colleges received a total of $1.3 million.

GROSS COLLECTIONS BY TAX TYPE

Individual income tax collections

  • Increased 6.1 percent for the year, from $3.04 billion last year to $3.22 billion this year.
  • Increased 8.0 percent for the month.

Sales and use tax collections

  • Increased 2.4 percent for the year, from $1.08 billion last year to $1.10 billion this year.
  • Increased 14.7 percent for the month.

Corporate income and corporate franchise tax collections

  • Increased 0.9 percent for the year, from $235.8 million last year to $237.9 million this year.
  • Increased 35.6 percent for the month.

All other collections

  • Increased 37.8 percent for the year, from $188.0 million last year to $259.2 million this year.
  • Increased 20.8 percent for the month.

Refunds

  • Decreased 28.5 percent for the year, from $389.1 million last year to $278.1 million this year.
  • Decreased 54.0 percent for the month.
Tags
Government, Politics & Issues St. Louis Beacon archivesMissouri BudgetLinda Luebbering
Jo Mannies
Jo Mannies has been covering Missouri politics and government for almost four decades, much of that time as a reporter and columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was the first woman to cover St. Louis City Hall, was the newspaper’s second woman sportswriter in its history, and spent four years in the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. She joined the St. Louis Beacon in 2009. She has won several local, regional and national awards, and has covered every president since Jimmy Carter. She scared fellow first-graders in the late 1950s when she showed them how close Alaska was to Russia and met Richard M. Nixon when she was in high school. She graduated from Valparaiso University in northwest Indiana, and was the daughter of a high school basketball coach. She is married and has two grown children, both lawyers. She’s a history and movie buff, cultivates a massive flower garden, and bakes banana bread regularly for her colleagues.
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