Data source and background info
Most available economic indicators lag months, if not years behind. We are therefore stuck with crude indicators like Unemployment and reported Sales for sales tax purposes.
*NOTE: reported periods reflects the sales of one or two month earlier due to a lag in reporting.
Even though Taxable Sales for this winter season were significantly above last winter season, the March revenues came in quite a bit lower – specifically in retail and wholesale. This depressed our 12 month rolling revenues (April 2012 through March 2013) to a (still positive) 2% increase over the previous year. Since some of the businesses may have reported late in March, we may still see a correction with the April reporting.
12 month sector-sales
Figure 3: 12 month sector sales (taxable+non-taxable) over the last 3 years; the underlying data for this graph is compiled from the tax data published by http://tax.idaho.gov . The spreadsheet can be downloaded from link .
We need to remember that both the retail sales tax figures and the lodging figures are skewed by the housing boom that occurred. The construction materials and labor distorted the numbers. I think tourism heads in beds are at an all time high considering that there aren’t any construciton workers lodging Sunday through Thursday and the ADRs (average daily rates) are down. I would like to see the sales tax figures excluding building materials.
Thanks!
RC
Per the November 2012 sales we now show the reported sales per sector, which will allow isolating not only the tourism sector, but distinguish recreation from hospitality within that sector.
We’ll continue to refine the information, so let me know if it is going into the right direction…