
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, October 29, 1993                   TAG: 9310290167
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

STORE SALES ARE GOOD, BUT THE FIGURES SURE ARE TRICKY

If you compare the taxes collected on retail sales in August with a year ago, it appears that shopping is booming. Unfortunately, that's not quite accurate.

Tax revenue jumped 47 percent in Bedford County, 49 percent in Pulaski County and 42 percent in Roanoke County in August, according to figures reported Thursday by the State Department of Taxation.

Some of the increase comes from the addition of new stores - two Goody's Family Clothing stores opened in August in the Roanoke Valley, for example. But much of the gains are due more to what the August figures are being compared with than to actual increases in consumer activity.

Last year's sales didn't include all the taxable sales for the month. General merchants must report a month's sales by the 20th of the following month. But major retail chain operators have until the end of the following month to file reports with the state, meaning some of those sales don't always get credited to the month in which they actually occurred.

Also, August 1992 was a period of economic slump in areas of Western Virginia. Sales in the New River Valley, for example, were affected by layoffs at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant. The Roanoke Valley's economy was inert.

Because of the timing of sales reports, Roy Pearson, director of the College of William and Mary's Bureau of Business Research, said he looks at two months together to spot trends.

With that view, he said, the state and the Roanoke region are showing healthy increases in retail sales over last year and 1991.

In real terms, adjusted for inflation, Pearson said the Roanoke Valley's sales are up up 16.2 percent from last year.

"I'm not overly impressed, but I'm impressed," said Maynard Sayers, Pulaski County's commissioner of the revenue, of his county's hefty increase.

Mary Houska, Hollins College economics professor, said the August results indicate that "apparently our citizens are more optimistic."

"You have to be very careful when you're starting from a very low former figure," Houska said. "But it's nice to see that kind of growth. That's still substantial. It's the first optimistic thing I've heard about this area in a long time."

by CNB