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By Dawn Burleigh

Despite fears of COVID-19, sales tax revenue was on the rise for most of the Orange County area for this period which were based on sales made in May 2020.

Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar announced on Wednesday he will send cities, counties, transit systems and special purpose taxing districts $744.2 million in local sales tax allocations for July, 2.6 percent less than in July 2019. These allocations are based on sales made in May by businesses that report tax monthly.

Widespread social distancing requirements were relaxed across much of the state in May, thus year-over-year declines were not as steep as they were last month.

Rose City had the only decrease in sales tax revenue of 25.27% for this month when comparing $17,008.58 in 2019 compared to $12,710.29 in 2020. For year to date, the city also had a decrease of 25.39% for payments for the same period as last year when comparing $139,947.17 in 2019 to $104,406.58 in 2020.

The City of Pine Forest had the largest increase with 36.5% more in sales tax revenue for this month when comparing $13,370.87 in payments for 2020 to $9,793.89 in 2019. This also showed an increase of 20.81% for year to date payments.

City of Orange also shows an increase for this month of payments with $394,750.99 in 2019 compared to $439,922.84 in 2020. The city also received more in year to date payments with a 7% increase when comparing $2,998,436.51 2019 payments to 2020 payments of $3,212,650.06.

Orange County also saw an increase of 17.82% for this payment of $465,055.28 in 2020 compared to $394,685.48 in 2019. For year to date, the county received $3,330,732.23 in 2020 compared to $3,179,583.22 in 2019, reflecting a 4.75% increase.