A study says the City of Tulsa could bring in an additional $60 million a year if state lawmakers approve taxing certain services, such as landscaping and dry cleaning.
OSU professor Ali Nejadmalayeri said service industries in the Tulsa area generate about $3 billion in revenue a year.
"Two percent is what the city gets from the sales tax mix, so we assume that's what they would get, everything would be exactly the same, so if you go with that, then we get around that $60 million," Nejadmalayeri said.
Mayor Dewey Bartlett said the city has gotten by in recent years making conservative forecasts of sales tax revenue.
"But if the economy suddenly takes a twist, if the price of oil or natural gas has a precipitous drop — as we're experiencing now — then suddenly, a big change will occur that we haven't forecasted," Bartlett said. "And that results in a lot of changes in city budgets and employment."
An additional $60 million in revenue would account for about 20 percent of all city sales tax revenues and represent a more stable funding stream.
Lawmakers have talked a lot lately about diversifying the state’s tax base. With a lot of new lawmakers coming to the capitol, however, it’s hard to gauge whether the political will is there.
"A third of the House representatives are brand-new, newly elected, and so their perspective on something like this is hard to gauge," said state Rep. Glen Mulready, who attended the city council committee meeting Wednesday where the study findings were presented. "I think it's absolutely something that our colleagues will be interested in looking at deeper this year."
Mulready said lawmakers discovered during an interim study surrounding states are already taxing more services than Oklahoma does.
