Carson City sees huge increase in taxable sales for April

Carson City businesses reported a whopping 30 percent increase in taxable sales for April - all in one category.

The listing for electronics and appliance stores increased to $17.14 million compared to just $679,111 in April 2010.

That jump is so large it makes up more than a fifth of the 2.3 percent statewide increase in taxable sales for the month.

Carson City Finance Director Nick Providenti said he doesn't have details but that, apparently, it was a $16 million one-time sale of cell phone equipment.

The Department of Taxation doesn't release what it considers proprietary information so further details are unlikely to be forthcoming.

Without that sale, Providenti said Carson City's April numbers would have been flat compared to the previous year - which is what he and city staff predicted when they built the budget.

It was the second month of this calendar year that Carson City benefited from the purchase of electronics. In February, a single computer purchase by a capital manufacturing firm boosted taxable sales by 8 percent.

Total Carson City sales for April were $71.9 million, pushing year to date sales above $607 million and an increase of 8.2 percent over fiscal 2010. A 9.2 percent increase in general merchandise sales was offset by a 6.6 percent decrease in auto sales while most other major categories were flat.

Statewide, 44,303 businesses reported $3.36 billion in sales Clark County fell nine-tenths of a percent to $2.48 billion while Washoe showed a 10 percent improvement at $435.4 million. Total sales were off by nearly 11 percent in Churchill with $18.8 million in sales. The only other county in negative numbers for the month was Eureka.

Douglas was up a bit - 3.9 percent - with $40.5 million in sales reported. Storey County, where wide fluctuations are regularly reported because of events at the Reno-Tahoe Industrial Park, saw a 26 percent increase in April to just over $5 million. White Pine County recorded an even bigger gain than Carson City. The 93.6 percent increase to $26.4 million was in categories related to the mining industry.