December totals smallest in years in Barry County

By Murray Bishoff Special to the Cassville Democrat

Sales tax revenues to the bi-county area ended 2025 on an unusually low note. 

Total receipts of $2.5 million to bi-county cities and county governments dropped by 13% from 2024, the lowest amount since 2021, at the beginning of the pandemic surge in local sales. 

Use taxes became a more prominent feature in the year-end tallies, generating revenue from online sales in five of the seven Barry County cities generating sales tax and three of the six Lawrence County cities. For the year, only half the bi-county cities bested totals for 2024, while countywide taxes for emergency services showed marginal gains. Both Barry and Lawrence county governments, both with use taxes, recorded big gains in 2025. 

Complicating the picture further, the Missouri Department of Revenue issued interest for money collected at the end of December, for funds received by the state for the second half of 2022. It was the only interest paid out in 2025. Lawrence County and its six cities split up $2,060.75, while Barry County and its seven cities parsed out $2,099.96. The smallest amount was 4 cents for a sunsetting Monett sales tax. Totals have been added into the respective tax totals for the month. Interest disbursements once again came without warning and no indication when another might come. 

The seven Barry County cities receiving sales tax revenues generated $751,379.03, the lowest amount in December since 2020. Not counting the new Seligman law enforcement tax, that reflected a drop of 7% from last December. Exeter, Purdy, and Washburn all beat last December’s totals. 

• Cassville’s 1% general fund tax yielded $110,198.36, down $5,557.60. 

• Seligman’s 1% tax supporting the general fund generated $10,027.57, down $596.36.

• Wheaton’s 1% tax yielded $4,358.16, down $358.76. 

• Purdy’s 1% tax produced $5,127.35, up $1,418.03 for its third consecutive monthly gain. 

• Washburn’s 1% tax received $2,984.61, up $76.86. 

• Exeter’s 1% tax took in $2,541.82, up $736.90 from last December. 

• Monett’s 1% sales taxes for paying general bills produced $193,534.06, down $1,935.54. 

The county’s three half-cent sales taxes each received more than $216,100. Receipts for the oldest two were down by more than $19,530, or 8% for the month. 

The countywide tax supporting central dispatching produced $162,407.26, down $14,639.76. 

Summary for 2025

In 2025, more than $48.7 million in sales and use tax revenues came to the 13 bi-county cities, two county governments, the two county emergency services boards, and the two ambulance districts operating in Barry County. 

That total compares to $47.5 million collected in 2024, and $43 million in 2023. 

The 2025 total came from 72 different sales and use taxes, including 37 in Barry County. Note that online sales, including grocery orders to Walmart, do not charge sales taxes, but go to use taxes. Consequently, general fund totals may drop, drained by a diversion to the use tax, but rise when use tax totals are added in. Cities with older use taxes, like Monett, may have seen that drop in a previous year and recorded higher numbers more recently. Most cities have not committed use tax revenues to specific purposes and lump them back into the general fund. The following totals show specific collections, not combinations. 

Here’s where the money went:

Total tax numbers

The following tax amounts reflect the total amount of tax collected by each city and county, in 2025, as compared to 2024:

Cassville, which collected four taxes, took in a total of $3,305,005.65, down almost $29,250 from 2024 with rises in only 6 of the last 12 months. The city’s use tax gathered $344,404.50 in its second full year of collections, up 15% from the first full year. The use tax pushed overall totals to $3,649,410.15, up almost $16,500 over last year’s record, up more than $1.3 million from before the pandemic six years ago. 

Exeter, with one tax, collected $31,615.30, down 8%, or $2,811.62 from 2024, when receipts rose by 24%. The total is still up more than $10,000 from six years ago. 

Monett, with five active sales taxes and two sunsetted taxes, generated revenue in 2025. Even the sales tax paying for the Justice Center, sunsetted in 2016, still brought in $48.59. The seven taxes combined brought in $5,572,579.03, up almost $224,000 from a year ago, almost wiping out the drop in 2024 due to the newly introduced use tax. The use tax, collected for its second full year, brought in $954,045.34, up 11% from 2024. All Monett’s taxes combined totaled $6,526,575.78, up almost $316,000, or 5%, on top of the 4% gain in 2024. That’s up more than $2 million from 2019. 

Purdy, with three taxes, collected $125,264.36, down 11%, or almost $15,000 under the 2024 total. Purdy also saw its pandemic peak in 2022 at $144,309.31. Current receipts are about $277 lower than the 2018 total. 

Seligman now has five sales taxes, with five months of collections from its new 1% tax supporting law enforcement, creating the highest total of any bi-county city at 3.5%. These taxes combined generated $371,489.91, up $43,234.40 from a year ago. Without the police tax, receipts were down almost $6,000. Seligman’s use tax, now in its second full year, generated $82,660.17, up 40% from 2024, putting total receipts at $454,150.08, up almost $67,000 over last year. Compared to pre-pandemic 2019, which had two fewer taxes, receipts are up almost $200,000 in six years. 

Washburn, with three taxes, produced $66,934.22, thanks in part to an unprecedented suspension of collections by the State Auditor for two months due to a clerical mix-up. That’s a drop of $15,274.76, or 19% from 2024. Washburn’s use tax, collected for a second full year, brought in an additional $32,921.59, boosting the year’s total to $99,855.81, only $4,000 below the 2023 tally but a drop of $16,376.44 from 2024. Prior to the pandemic, and the arrival of Washburn’s Dollar General store, the city received just under $60,000 from its sales taxes in 2019. 

Wheaton produced $98,895.89 from its two sales taxes, even though the city’s half-cent tax for transportation only generated 46% of the 1-cent tax instead of 50%, an unexplained anomaly that’s been going on since 2017. The year’s total was up nearly $10,000, or 11% from last year. Wheaton’s use tax generated $16,430.07, a gain of 33%, putting the combined tax revenue total at $115,325.96. That’s down from the pandemic peak of $146,998.93 in 2021, but up $14,000 from 2024. Prior to the pandemic, Wheaton’s tax total was $71,217.18 in 2019. 

Barry County has three .5% taxes plus a .125% tax augmenting the general fund. Barry County’s two general fund sales taxes received $3,545,276.04, up $45,076.58, or 1% from 2024. In pre-pandemic 2019, general fund receipts were just under $2.7 million. 

Barry County’s four taxes combined brought in $9,218,430.78, up almost $135,000 from last year, the sixth consecutive year of gains. Barry County’s use tax yielded an additional $2,271,450.74, another 10% gain, with 26%, or $593,028.16 of that going into law enforcement. The overall sum of $11,489,881.52 was up almost $345,000, or 3%. That’s nearly $667,000 more than Lawrence County’s sales taxes generated. In pre-pandemic 2019, before the law enforcement and the use taxes, the county received a little more than $4.8 million in the year. 

Barry County 911 and central dispatching, supported by a .375% sales tax, garnered $2,127,145.41, up a little more than $27,000 for the year, the third year in a row for a gain of less than 1%. Six years ago, the tax generated $1.6 million. 

South Barry County Ambulance District, south of Butterfield, reported receiving $1,227,664.78, a gain of $44,213.87 from a year ago, or 4%, compared to a 7% jump between 2023 and 2024. 

The Barry-Lawrence Ambulance District received a tax increase to 1% in April, and began receiving larger collections, up from .5%, in November. For the year, the district received $1,419,844.74, an increase of $123,430.91. Between 2023 and 2024, receipts fell by almost $43,000 as Monett’s use tax kicked in, decreasing sales tax volume. Barry-Lawrence serves territory from Freistatt to Purdy, and from just west of Verona to east of Sarcoxie. Prior to switching to sales tax in 2019, the ambulance district serving Monett received around $330,000 in property taxes annually.