November was a wild ride month for sales tax collections in the Tri-Cities.

The Kingsport-Bristol Metropolitan Statistical Area posted the highest year-over-year and month-over-month increases after posting its largest 2017 year-over-year decrease in October. The increase – a little more than $2 million in seasonally adjusted funds than what was collected in October – was big enough to push it ahead of the Johnson City MSA in the comparison of year-to-date collections.

Kingsport’s year-over-year collections performance has been a wild ride since March.

If you look past the wild year-over-year swings, the trend shows collections in the Johnson City MSA area are 0.2% better than they were during the first 11 months of 2016; however, the year-over-year pattern has declined each month since August.

Kingsport-Bristol’s trend line for year-over-year collections shows big swings since March when both MSA’s year-over-year numbers went south. But on the all-import year-to-date comparison Kingsport-Bristol’s collection during the first 11 months of this year are 0.39% higher than they were last year.

Kingsport-Bristol claimed a 49.7% share of Tri-Cities collections in November, and that pushed the Johnson City MSA share to its lowest point for the year.

Stepping back for a regional look at year-to-date collections in Northeast Tennessee the Morristown MSA has the best growth rate followed by Knoxville, then Kingsport-Bristol and finally Johnson City.

The red line benchmarks the aggregate year-to-date collections in the four NE Tenn. MSAs.

Northeast Tennessee’s aggregate increase during the first 11 months of 2017 was up 0.99%. That means the two Tri-Cities metro areas are lagging the regional average while Knoxville and Morristown are above the regional rate.

Here’s how the year-to-year collections looked in Northeast Tennessee.

Kingsport-Bristol, up 5.8%

Morristown, up 3.3%

Knoxville, down 0.5%

Johnson City, down 2.1%.

State collections were 3.9% better than November last year.

The month-to-month collections for November were:

Kingsport-Bristol, up 12.9%

Morristown, up 2.3%

Johnson City, up 0.2%

Knoxville, down 2.1%.

Statewide collections were 0.4% higher than October.

A full listing of collections can be found at the MTSU Business and Economic Research Center website at http://capone.mtsu.edu/berc/tacir/summaryindicators.html?LABEL=sales+tax+collections+(thousand+%24)

Categories: CORE DATA, ECONOMY