This is something that we work hard at.
The city of McAllen recorded its largest monthly sales tax remittance in history this past December.
According to the February report from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, the city collected $10,616,234.24 in December 2022, an increase of 7.94% from December 2021. The city had previously recorded a record sum of sales tax revenue that month with a total of $9,835,015.44.
“We’ve been riding this wave now for a couple of years,” McAllen City Manager Roel “Roy” Rodriguez said Friday. “Last year we were glad to get out of the pandemic quickly, and then our revenues have continued to increase. We know that one of these days it’s going to flatten out, but it doesn’t look like it’s happening yet.”
According to a news release from the city, the year to date sales tax allocation for the city is up 5.81% from last year.
“December is always the biggest month for retail, and this represents the sales that happened in December,” Rodriguez said. “Ever since the bridges opened, it seems like commerce not only on our side of the border but Mexican nationals seem to be definitely coming back in record numbers.”
Rodriguez said the city is surprised to see such high numbers in sales tax revenue, but also believes the payoff is the sum of the work the city has done to attract shoppers from throughout the state and Northern Mexico.
“We do a lot of things,” he said. “We spend a lot of money in marketing and advertising in all of South Texas. We market from Brownsville up to San Antonio and over to Laredo. That’s the area that we market. In Corpus (Christi) as well and all of Northern Mexico, Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey. That’s our grid, and it’s a deliberate marketing strategy that we have been using for several years.”
“This isn’t an accident,” he continued. “This is something that we work hard at.”
To date, the report shows that the city has collected a total of $18,421,681.77.
Rodriguez said that influx in sales tax is something that the entire region is benefiting from. He said that the entire Rio Grande Valley is experiencing an uptick in sales tax revenue.
“The whole Rio Grande Valley is doing well, and it has been for the past 18 to 24 months,” he said. “McAllen is obviously way ahead of everyone else, but we’re happy that everyone is doing as they are. We continue to urge our residents of the Valley to shop here. There just isn’t very much that you have to go outside of the Rio Grande Valley to find.”
