Vicksburg’s city sales tax revenue in April jumped nearly 15 percent over the same month a year earlier, mirroring a steady upward trend in post-Hurricane Katrina collections statewide.

In all, compared with collections over the same seven-month period in FY05, officials calculated city retailers saw $42.3 million more in commerce from October 2005 to April of this year.

The collected amount is more than two-thirds the amount projected to collect throughout the fiscal year. The city had expected to collect $6.63 million through the beginning of the new fiscal year, Oct. 1.

The Aug. 29 hurricane that displaced thousands in New Orleans and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast to cities farther north has led to similar increases, some larger, in sales tax revenue across Mississippi. That trend is especially true from Interstate 20 south to just north of the coastal counties, said George Carter, chairman of the Department of Economics, Finance and International Business at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.

&#8220It just is going to be a larger crop of people who are buying more and paying a larger bulk of the sales tax,” Carter said. Katrina &#8220is the primary reason.”

The April figures come from the $648,276 the city received from local businesses’ March sales, a 14.75 percent increase over last year’s numbers and the sixth month out of seven to date in FY06 to see a double-digit rate increase over the same month in FY05. Sales tax collections from all cities by the Mississippi State Tax Commission for the month were up more than 17 percent over April 2005.

The state mandates a 7 percent tax on all sales, of which cities get back 18.5 percent from businesses within their limits. Extra taxes on top of the 7 percent base, such as the 2 percent restaurant and hotel tax that funds the Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau and Vicksburg Convention Center, are funneled back to appropriate agencies by the state, not into city coffers. The city receives no taxes from gasoline sales.

Typically, said city planner Paul Rogers, year-to-year revenue fluctuates a few percentage points. From April 2003-04, the increase was 1.5 percent, but from 2004-05, the city’s sales tax revenue went down, he said. The jump over the past few months, then, is not reason to let optimism overcome common sense in planning the 2007 budget, to be released in August, Rogers said.

&#8220I don’t try to project, but if I were making a recommendation, I wouldn’t count on getting this same amount next year,” he said.

Local business leaders were also stumped to explain specific factor behind the increase. Rogers attributed it to a general uptick in the economy – local unemployment was down through March and national per capita disposable income is up more than $1,000 since the start of January 2003, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a trend that held in Mississippi and Warren County.

Vicksburg Main Street Assistant Director Erin Hern said the marketing organization didn’t keep numbers that would show increased activity among downtown businesses, and Linda Watts, assistant director of the Warren County Port Commission and a member of the Vicksburg Chamber of Commerce, said she wasn’t able to tie any recent growth to quantifiable factors. The city was fortunate to retain the industry many more southern cities lost during Hurricane Katrina, she said, a possible explanation echoed by others.

&#8220That’s the sole reason,” said Larry Gawronski, director of the Vicksburg Convention Center. &#8220Our tourism has been hurting as far as visitorship, but our hotel tax and sales taxes are up because we had residents forced to live somewhere other than where they normally live.”

The statewide numbers seem to back up Gawronski, showing decreases in revenue from coastal cities devastated by the Aug. 29 storm and increases in cities north. Towns between the Coast and Jackson, especially, have recorded large economic growth. According to the state tax commission, sales tax revenue rose more than 38 percent from April ’05 to April ’06 in Hattiesburg, was up almost 25 percent in Laurel and skyrocketed just shy of 70 percent in Picayune.

&#8220Picayune has doubled in size. Hattiesburg has about 30,000 more and we expect most of those people to stay here,” said Carter, who said he noticed at Christmas the number of credit shoppers at a Hattiesburg store giving phone numbers with the Coast area code 228. &#8220People came to Hattiesburg to shop and spent money… I don’t think the storm has had nearly so much effect on Jackson and Vicksburg.”