May tax collections 1,303% over last year

Orange County Comptroller Phil Diamond has announced that Tourist Development Tax collections received by Orange County for May were $16,890,000. That is a 1,303.5% increase over May 2020.

Month over month, May collections were lower than April collections by 142,100. As well, May’s collections were $5,721,000, or 25.3% less than the last pre-pandemic May.

“In fact, this amount is less than we have collected in any pre-pandemic May month since 2014,” Diamond said.

Collections are rebounding but still below Fiscal Year 2018-19 levels.

The month of May marked another milestone in the recovery, comptroller staff said. This is the first month since the start of the pandemic that the county did not have to use TDT reserves to offset TDT funding obligations.

The county has used more than $145 million of reserves to meet its TDT obligations since the start of the pandemic. This has caused the “Other Authorized Uses” reserves to decrease from $181 million to $36 million, comptroller staff said.