General Tax Revenues Down

{Charleston, West Virginia}...Deputy Revenue Secretary Mark Muchow said Thursday that West Virginia general tax revenues missed their mark by $42 million in November, their worst monthly performance in nearly two years. Muchow says income tax refunds account for much of the shortfall. He says both individuals and corporations overpaid what they owed last year because of uncertainty over 2010 federal tax rates. Those two revenue sources fell nearly $33 million below estimate for the month, after back-to-back months of collections that beat expectations. Muchow says October's ahead-of-schedule proceeds from taxes on coal and other extracted natural resources also played a role in last month's results. These severance taxes came in $7.3 million below their projection. But sales and use taxes, a sign of economic activity that supply nearly one-third of all general revenues, beat their target for the third straight month. The state collected $3.6 million more than the expected $95 million. November brought in $242.3 million, but $284.3 million had been forecast. A monthly revenue estimate hadn't fallen that far short since March 2010, when the shortfall exceeded $58 million.