Mississippi surpassing projected revenue collection amount by more than $1B

PINE BELT, Miss. (WDAM) - It’s a record-breaking fiscal year for the state of Mississippi.

The Mississippi Legislative Budget Office recently released the latest revenue report for the fiscal year 2022. It shows the amount of tax revenue collected by the state during May of this year.

What the report found is that Mississippi is surpassing what legislators thought it would in terms of revenue.

“For the month of May alone, $173.5 million more income (was) collected to the state coffers than we had anticipated,” said Sen. Joey Fillingane, R-District 41.

The data shows that two categories saw the largest increases.

“For the month, individual income tax is what is really up a gigantic amount,” said Fillingane. “For the month, we collected $131.2 million ... Then for sales tax, it’s up a healthy amount.”

These surplus amounts aren’t exclusive to May.

According to Fillingane, the legislature estimated the state would collect roughly $5.9 billion. In March of this year, however, legislators re-estimated that amount to be $6.8 billion... a nearly $950 million increase.

With a month still left to go in FY 22, the state has already surpassed both the initial and revised estimate.

“The fiscal 2022 year-to-date actual collections above the line are $387.7 million above the revised estimate... and if that continues for another month, which it almost certainly will, we will have almost another $500 million above the revised estimate that we bumped up nearly a billion dollars,” said Fillingane.

The same thing happened last year when the state ended up with a revenue surplus. Those funds were allocated to different projects.

“This last set of money, a lot of it is going to infrastructure,” said Fillingane. “So, roads, bridges, airports, some more broadband access dollars... a lot of those things, and then there are quite a few of the dollars that are being used to either renovate or construct new buildings at the community college and university level across the state.”

While Fillingane expects this year’s extra revenue to be allocated for some of the same types of projects. We’ll have to wait until the legislature reconvenes, which is set for January of 2023, to find out what exactly it’ll go to.

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