Wood County cities began the new year with positive gains in sales tax revenue.

The January report from the state comptroller’s office, which is primarily for sales made by merchants in November and reported to the state in December, shows six cities earned $406,638 in sales tax income.

That marks a 14.7% increase over January 2019 when $354,410 was received.

In addition to taxes collected by cities, Wood County collected $176,271 from its half-cent sales tax, a gain of 13 percent from last year.

All cities but Hawkins showed gains over last January, and that decline was a slight 1.66%, representing a loss of $348 to $20,587 for the month.

Winnsboro reported a slight increase of 2.6% to $96,103.

Mineola received $199,920 as its share of the sales tax for a 18.5% gain.

Quitman pocketed $63,141 in January for a 15.1% gain.

An increase of almost seven percent gave Yantis $6,036 in January sales tax revenue.

Alba’s income almost doubled, from $10,589 last year to $20,849 in 2020.

All cities in Wood County collect a 1.5% sales tax on top of the state’s 6.25%. Combined with the .5% collected by the county, the total tax rate is 8.25% on retail sales, which is the maximum allowed by law.

Most cities place one cent of sales tax revenue in the general fund and a half-cent for economic development.