(Fremont County, WY) – Why did taxable sales fall in Fremont County during the last quarter of 2021?
The decrease was most likely due to an accounting error that resulted in a refund, Wyoming’s chief economic Wenlin Liu said.
He shared a report detailing year-over-year changes in sales and use tax collections by industry for Fremont County.
The table shows that the local mining industry actually recorded a negative number for sales and use tax collections (-$29,888) during the fourth quarter of 2021.
“Some kind of refund occurred,” Liu said. “(This) sometimes happens due to auditing, or some other mistakes that the Wyoming Department of Revenue may discover.”
He said the same situation likely applies to sales and use tax collections from local utilities, which supposedly fell by 67.6 percent in Fremont County, to $74,366, during the fourth quarter of 2021.
Taking refunds out of the equation, Liu said taxable sales in Fremont County actually increased by 4.4 percent.
He attributed the local growth mainly to increases in the retail, leisure and hospitality, and automobile industries.
Sales and use tax collections in the retail trade totaled $4.576 million during the last quarter of 2021 in Fremont County, meaning the industry recorded $114.4 million in taxable sales – an increase of 8.1 percent compared with the previous year, according to Liu’s spreadsheet.
In the local leisure and hospitality industry, sales and use tax collections reached $838,892 during the fourth quarter of 2021, translating to almost $21 million in taxable sales – a 30 percent increase over the previous year.
To calculate total taxable sales for other local industries, divide sales and use tax collections by .04 (the state tax rate).