South Carolina’s deteriorating economic situation got some additional bad news Friday when Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom released revenue data showing another big monthly drop in state tax collections.
Obviously we could care less about government losing money (state government in South Carolina is far too big to begin with), but the reality is that this drop in revenue is directly attributable to income loss from businesses and individual taxpayers, as well as sluggish sales.
That’s bad, and a sign that the “Great Recession” – which has seen roughly 100,000 South Carolinians lose their jobs – is still raging.
According to Eckstrom, state revenues for December 2009 were $661 million – which is 3.1 percent (or $21.4 million) less than December 2008′s total of $682.4 million.
Here’s the rest of the bad news:
Year-to-date (July 1 – Dec. 31), total state revenue is down 5.8 percent. Revenue from all sources fell $187,241,148 (from $3,244,218,283 in 2008 to $3,056,977,135 in 2009) from the same period the previous year.
Year-to-date, corporate income taxes declined 51.6 percent (from $69,380,323 in 2008 to $33,572,881 in 2009), sales tax revenue was down 5.1 percent (from $938,375,328 to $890,514,620) , and individual income taxes declined 3.7 percent (from $1,896,430,267 in 2008 to $1,826,540,673 in 2009).
Already facing an unconstitutional deficit of $100 million from FY 2008-09, South Carolina’s Budget and Control Board (a quasi-executive, quasi-legislative bureaucracy that’s unique to our backwards state) recently ordered another $238 million cut from state agency budgets for the current fiscal year.
That amounts to roughly a 1.1% reduction of the state’s current $20.5 billion budget for FY 2009-10.
Meanwhile, South Carolina’s state government agencies have received over $1 billion in federal “stimulus” money during the current fiscal year.
By Liberty For Me January 9, 2010 at 11:58 am
Having a state income and property tax is such a backwards way to bring SC forward.If you want to be a leading state you must do things that lead to economic growth.Unless your model is Detriot.
You could completely change the state in 5 years if you instituted a little liberty into your economics.
By BIN News Editorial Staff January 9, 2010 at 3:21 pm
sic(k) willie is such a pimp. He knows.
It’s bad. Very, very bad.
Gonna get worse.
Gonna get badder.
Republicrats got us into this.
Thanks, sic(k) willie and Markie.
Don’t ferget the Demopublicans. They are just as bad.
By No Name January 9, 2010 at 4:43 pm
How come no quote or an attempt at a quote from the “CHAIR”.
Also time to circulate a “No new tax pledge” from Republicans running for Gov.
As most of this data is compiled by folks that would lie if told to do so…this must be very bad to be made public at this point.
And what happened to the State Pension story we were promised.
By James the Foot Soldier January 9, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Welcome to reality BIN, Eckstrom, et all….go to the archives for the “we’re in a wicked vortex” assessment back in Ocotber 2008.
Were South Carolina to have a single competent constitutional attorney a law suit should have been filed requiring the current budget be remanded back to the legislators/luvguv to achive a constituionally required balance.
By Art January 11, 2010 at 12:14 pm
If you think state revenue’s are down. Think about our local government. Lexington County has less unemployment than other county’s. However, their revenue has be droping for the pass several years. So the county has only two things to do, cut services and or increase taxes. I think the county’s will do both.
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