State Revenue Secretary Bob Kiss says West Virginia
“We are in pretty much in the same
status-quo position we were last month,” Kiss said. “The deficit has grown
some, there were some timing reasons for that and some other reasons, but it
doesn’t cause us a tremendous amount of concern.”
Revenue collections missed estimates in
September by $23.8 million. Kiss said that’s mainly because transfer of
severance tax revenues to counties took place earlier than anticipated. The move
made severance tax collections $28.5 million short of where the state thought
they would be in September.
However, the state did report a strong
month in personal income tax collections. Deputy Revenue Secretary Mark Muchow
said it was $6.5 million above estimate and nearly 9 percent better than last
fiscal year at this time. It’s an indication more people are working and
existing pay is increasing. Personal income tax is the state’s largest revenue
source, making up 40 percent of collections.
Muchow said he would anticipate the
consumer sales tax collections to reflect the increase in personal income tax
collections over the next few months.
Secretary Kiss said despite the
improvements, the state is still running a deficit in collections for the fiscal
year so it must continue to be monitored.
“Right now we don’t necessarily need to
take any immediate action. We are continuing to watch it and monitor the
numbers month-to-month,” Kiss said.
Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s state
government hiring freeze remains in place and Kiss doesn’t seen any changes in
that now.
“In any year, generally, we like to see the data through October
and November before we start trying to make projections through the whole year
based on that. So I think we’re still a couple of months away from that,” Kiss
said.
