Brownwood’s sales tax allocations for October increased for the first time since July while Early’s numbers saw a sharp decline for the month.

Brownwood’s sales tax allocations for October were up more than 2% compared to October of last year.  Year-to-date, sales tax collections are down more than 4%, but that number has slowly leveled off in recent months.

The city of Early saw a drop of more than 16% in their sales tax allocations for October compared to the same month last year.  This also drops their year-to-date sales tax numbers to more than 3%.

State Comptroller Susan Combs said that her office will distribute monthly sales tax allocations of $300.1 million to Texas cities, up 6.1 percent compared to last October.

“This increase is significantly larger than recent monthly gains which have been in the 0 to 2 percent range,” said Combs. “Sales tax increases were posted across almost all sectors including oil and gas, construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail trade and restaurants.”

So far this calendar year, city sales tax allocations are running 1 percent lower than the same time last year.

The state and local sales tax figures represent sales that occurred in August.