By Teresa Herriman, The Courier-Herald
The Washington State Department of Revenue recently released local tax distribution figures for the calendar year 2003.
Distributions are based on retail sales. Tax collections reported are those returned to city, county or other local jurisdictions where the sales transaction took place. It is one indicator of the strength of the economy.
The results indicate positive economic growth for the city of Bonney Lake, with increases in every category, translating to an additional $415,155.89 in tax receipts for 2003 compared to the previous year. The categories include basic and optional tax distributions, which refers to general local sales and use taxes, plus an additional local sales and use tax for criminal justice programs levied by the county. Criminal justice distributions are shared with the cities based on population.
Overall, Bonney Lake ranked seventh in total distributions among Pierce County cities. Tacoma received the most, just less than $40 million, followed by Puyallup, Lakewood, Fife, Gig Harbor and Sumner.
Bonney Lake received nearly a million dollars of the total $50 million returned in the basic tax distributions category and slightly more than $900,000 of the optional distribution.
Compared with 2002, Bonney Lake's tax distribution increased a healthy 29.3 percent, from $1.42 million in 2002 to $1.8 million in 2003. Pierce County saw an 8.4 percent increase. Among Pierce County cities, Carbonado showed the largest percentage increase with a whopping 132.6 percent surge from 2002 to 2003. Tax distributions for Carbonado increased from more than $11,000 to more than $26,000.
Bonney Lake posted the third largest increase behind Carbonado and Ruston, which saw a 59.2 percent increase.
The median percentage of change among Pierce County cities was 9.9 percent, meaning half the cities posted gains above 9.9 percent while half the cities saw a less than 9.9 percent change.
The only Pierce County city to lose tax distributions since 2002 was University Place.
Of the criminal justice tax dollars, Bonney Lake received the fifth largest amount, behind Tacoma, Lakewood, Puyallup and University Place.
The $152,587 represents a 15.5 percent increase in criminal justice distributions for Bonney Lake and the second largest year-over-year increase behind DuPont with a 22.3 percent gain.
Among neighboring cities, criminal justice distributions for Buckley increased 7.9 percent and Sumner saw a 7.1 percent increase in its receipts.
Since Bonney Lake has no hotels or motels, there were no tax funds for this category.
Other tax distributions are used to fund specific public facilities and uses. These include a county rental car tax to pay for sports facilities and youth and amateur sports programs. Pierce County, one of only four counties in the state to collect such taxes, received an additional 3.7 percent in receipts in 2003 compared to 2002. The other counties include Franklin, King and Spokane.
A local sales tax for Pierce County to fund parks, the zoo and aquarium earned nearly $10 million representing a 7.6 percent gain over 2002.
Local tax distribution figures are updated monthly on the Department of Revenue's Web site (http://dor.wa.gov) under the link, Statistical Reports.
Teresa Herriman can be reached at therriman@courierherald.com
