New York’s Local Sales Tax Revenue Plunges 32% in May

Sales tax revenue for counties and cities in New York fell by 32.3% in May from the amount collected in the same month last year, State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli said Friday.

The May total of $918 million was $437 million less than in 2019. It reflected a sharp decline statewide, with nearly every county seeing a large drop in overall collections, the Democratic comptroller said. In New York City, the decline was 31.9%, amounting to $196 million in lost revenues for a single month.

“We anticipated that sales tax revenues would continue to drop because of Covid-19 but the May sales tax figures show just how deep it is cutting into municipal finances,” he said in a statement, calling for federal aid “to avoid severe cuts to critical services.”

The year-to-year drop in local sales tax collections in April was 24.4%, following “relatively modest losses in March collections,” DiNapoli said, for a 19.2% total decline over the three months of the pandemic’s impact. Details on online sales tax collections weren’t available, he said.