July is the first month of Fiscal Year 2019 for the state of Mississippi and in the past two months, the revenue report for the state is up approximately $40 million each month. Senator Buck Clarke Serves as the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and said he believes the biggest increase has come from the online use tax.
“Amazon deciding to collect on behalf of the state and then the big Supreme Court ruling that took place last month on the South Dakota vs. Wayfair, you know, it has changed everything and everybody now is anticipating possibly more revenue in that category,” Clarke said.
Clarke added that of the additional funds, $30 million came from one-time money from cases that the Attorney General has settled.
“We had gotten to the end of April and we were about ready to break even,” Clarke said. “Back when we did the revenue estimating, during the end of the session, they essentially gave us a flat revenue amount and we didn’t see any increases coming in on the horizon.”
Clarke said that while there are still closeouts that need to take place, they are estimating approximately $88 million over what they were expecting to collect.
“It will go through a year-end split, about half of it will go toward a Capitol expense fund and the other portion will run over to the rainy day fund,” Clarke said. “The Capitol expense money is for some one-time projects, roof repairs and some other projects that we anticipated in the session and we will have the money available.”
