State Treasury Takes Another Hit from Oil and Gas Downturn

It is just one round of bad energy news after another in Oklahoma as Oklahoma Treasurer Ken Miller announced on Friday that monthly gross receipts to the Treasury in January took their largest plunge in more than five years, mostly because of the oil and gas downturn.

January collections totaled $985.4 million, a drop of nearly $150 million or more than 13 percent compared to January of 2015. It was the first double-digit percentage reduction in monthly gross receipts since the treasurer’s office began tracking them in March 2010.

“The surplus-driven energy contraction continues to spill over into all of Oklahoma’s main revenue sources,” said Miller. “Every major revenue stream in January is smaller than a year ago. Collections from oil and natural gas gross production are off by more than 50 percent, and the downturn is suppressing income, sales, and motor vehicle tax collections.”

His office indicated the monthly collections from oil and gas production taxes have been lower than the same month of the previous year for 13 straight months. January gross production collections were nearly 55 percent lower than January of a year ago. The gross production taxes generated $25.24 million in January, a drop of $30.56 million or 54.8 percent from last January. Compared to December 2015 reports, gross production collections were down by $12.47 million or 33.1 percent.

The 12-month gross receipts overall sharnk by nearly 5 percent compared to the previous 12-month period and at $11.5 billion, represented the lowest 12-month total since December 2013.

Other areas of tax collections were down including gross income tax collections which totaled $377.07 million or a drop of more than $73 million or 16.2 percent from January of 2015. Personal income tax collections for the month totaled more than $341 million or a decline of nearly $33 million or 8.7 percent from the previous year. Corporate collections were $35.6 million, down by $40.36 million or 53.1 percent.

The motor vehicle tax collections were $67.24 million, a drop of $1.27 million or 1.9 percent from January 2015. Even collections on fuel, tobacco, horse race gambling and alcoholic beverages were down. They produced $141.22 million in January but that was $12.68 million or 8.2 percent less than January of last year.