Strange Sales Tax Numbers in the Mayor’s 2025 Budget Proposal
December 2, 2024
Upon further review of the sales tax figures in the mayor’s budget proposal, the 2023 actual receipts appear to be alarmingly low while the 2025 revenue estimate is very high.
Why is Troy’s 2023 sales tax revenue so low?
Under Actual Receipts 2023 in the Mantello administration’s 2025 annual budget proposal, sales tax revenue is recorded at $18,086,578. We are very confused by this, because that figure should be $19,743,621. This would mean that there is $1,657,043 from 2023’s sales tax revenue that is somehow still unaccounted for.
Through Troy’s sales tax agreement with Rensselaer County, the city receives 19.65% of the first $80 million of annual sales tax revenue collected across the whole county and 9.00% of any sales tax revenue in excess of that.
If the Mantello administration’s 2023 actual receipts are accurate, that would mean that Troy collected $1,373,076 more from sales tax in 2022 than it did last year despite an increase in county-wide sales tax revenue and no changes to the formula, which does not make any sense.
We can find Rensselaer County’s sales tax figures in their tentative budget, where they show $124,706,896 across the entire county. Feeding that figure into the formula, we get $19,743,621. This is odd because, for actual receipts from 2020 to 2022, Troy’s figures and what we get after applying the formula to Rensselaer County’s actual receipts in their tentative budgets actually line up to the dollar.
Why is Troy’s 2025 sales tax revenue estimate so high?
The Mantello administration’s approved estimate for 2025 sales tax revenue is $21,250,000. In order for Troy to get that under the current agreement, Rensselaer County as a whole would need to raise $141,444,444, which is 13.42% more than it pulled in during the last full calendar year.
We hope that the Mantello administration will “show their work” during tonight’s City Council meeting.
