Northeast Tennessee’s state sales tax collections closed 2019 with a 5.2% increase over last year with the Knoxville MSA claiming the lion’s share of the increase.

Annual seasonally adjusted state sales tax collections

Results for the Tri-Cities two metro areas’ year-end results were mixed.

The Johnson City MSA’s annual collections were 3.1% better than 2018, while Kingsport-Bristol saw a 0.3% decrease.

December’s MTSU Economic Research Center’s seasonally adjusted report for the state’s 10 MSAs shows Knoxville had the second-best increase over December last year. Jackson led the state with a 34.1% increase over December last year. Only Jackson and Knoxville had double-digit increases on the year-over-year metric.

Here’s how the Tri-Cities metro area’s looked compared to December 2018 collections:

Knoxville, up 12.9%.

Johnson City, up 6.2%.

Morristown, up 1.5%.

Kingsport-Bristol, up 0.8%.

Tennessee’s December collections were 3.7% better than in 2018.

Kingsport-Bristol’s December collections were the best in NE Tenn. when compared to November. And it was one of only four metro areas that had an increase in that metric.

Kingsport-Bristol, up 3.3%

Morristown, down 0.9%.

Johnson City, down 1.1%.

Knoxville, down 1.9%.

Statewide collections were down 0.7% on the month-over-month metric.

Kingsport-Bristol’s collections have been the most volatile of all the NE Tenn. metro areas. In 2018 collections were up 3.8% and 0.1% off Knoxville’s annual performance.  But instead of arching higher in 2019 as collections did in the region’s three other metro areas, Kingsport-Bristol declined. The pattern for Kingsport-Bristol’s collections since 2010 has been to reach an annual high then decline for the next two years.

Both Johnson City and Kingsport-Bristol have steadily lost market share when NE Tenn. collections are calculated.

Johnson City’s market share of NE Tenn. nonadjusted collections was 14.3% in 2010 and has declined to 12.9% in 2019.

Kingsport-Bristol 2010 market share was 14.4% and 13.4% in 2019.

Morristown’s market share of 7.6% of the region’s total collections was unchanged from 2010.

State sales tax collections for East Tennessee’s three Consolidated Statistical Areas

Knoxville’s 2019 market share has increased to 66.2% compared to 63.7% in 2010. It has risen steadily every year.

When compared on a Consolidated Statistical Area (CSA) basis, Knoxville-Morristown, Chattanooga-Cleveland, and Johnson City-Kingsport-Bristol have seen annual increases since 2010. However, the Tri-Cities overall collections performance has significantly lagged the other regions in all but one year since 2017.

Here’s what those region’s annual growth rate looked for those three years.

Knoxville:

2017, up 1.5%

2018, up 3.7%

2019, up 7.2%

Chattanooga

2017, up 4.7%

2018, up 2.4%

2019, up 4.2%

Johnson City-Kingsport-Bristol

2017, up 0.5%

2018, up 2.8%

2019, up 1.5%

Categories: ECONOMY