Retail Sales in Texas Plunge…”Oil Bust Contagion Spreads.”
by Wolf Richter
WolfStreet.com
December 14, 2015
Retail sales in Texas, based on sales tax collections as reported by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, have been booming since March 2010, the low point in the Great Recession.
Sales tax collections jumped 44% from $18.3 billion during the first 11 months of 2010 to $26.3 billion during the same period in 2015! The state government was ecstatic. Retailers were happy. People were spending money they didn’t have on things they preferably didn’t need, and in doing so, were paying lots of taxes. The state was firing on all cylinders.
Sales tax collections aren’t a perfect indicator of retail sales. Not all sales are taxable, such as food products (flour, sugar, bread, milk, eggs, fruits, vegetables, and similar groceries), though many edible goods are taxable, as are most other goods. Taxes on motor vehicle sales and rentals are in a separate category. And collections are raw data, not seasonally adjusted, so they can only be compared to data from the same months in prior years. But they’re an unvarnished approximation of the movements of retail sales.
That retail boom in Texas coincided with the oil boom, when WTI traded above $100 a barrel for part of the time, and fracking became the new miracle activity that ate up billions of dollars every year and knew no limits. Drill, Baby Drill.
The Rest…HERE
