Oil Patch County Sees Over $1.1 Billion In Taxable Sales And Purchases In Second Quarter
The Office of the State Tax Commissioner released their quarterly sales tax report yesterday. The full report is below, but worth noting is the fantastic growth going on in the oil patch.
Williams County, home to Williston and the heart of the Bakken oil boom, saw $1,189,589,267 in taxable sales and purchases in the 2nd quarter of 2012. That was a 74.16% increase over the taxable sales/purchases figure for the second quarter of 2011 which, in turn, was a 81.57% increase over the second quarter of 2010.
Here’s a graph showing 2nd quarter taxable sales going back 5 years and comparing Williams County to the state’s four most populous counties (Ward, Burleigh, Grand Forks and Cass):
As you can see, the growth is astounding. Williams County has a smaller population (as near as we can tell, anyway, as Census counts and the like are proving unreliable due to the rapid growth) than all of these counties. Williams has a fraction of the population of Cass, specifically, and yet has more taxable sales and purchases than all of them.
Overall, state sales tax collections grew 41% over the second quarter of 2011.
