State Deputy Revenue Secretary Mark
Muchow said Tuesday personal income tax collections fell short by $5 million
last month. He said the ongoing impact of an alternative fuels vehicle tax
credit and stagnant withholding tax revenues are the reasons why.
“There’s very little wage and
salary growth and with that we’ve had a bit of a decline in withholding tax
collections,” Muchow said.
Collections are behind estimates in
personal income tax by $32 million for the first two months of the new
fiscal year.
Muchow said there’s positive
movement in the severance tax category because of increasing natural gas
production.
“We’ve begun to see some
improvements in the pricing of gas as well and those are two big contributing
factors in a growth rate year-to-date of 13.8 percent,” Muchow said.
The Tomblin administration
continues to maintain its going to be a tight budget year. Muchow said he sees
some revenue growth in the second half of the fiscal year but it will be small,
continuing the trend of recent years.
“The last five years our average growth rate per year has only
been about .4 percent where as our long term growth rate has been ten
times that amount at 4 percent,” Muchow said.
