Albuquerque Gross Receipts Tax Hits 66.4% of General Fund

Gross receipts tax revenue accounted for 66.4 percent of the City of Albuquerque General Fund and 35 percent of the full operating budget in fiscal year 2022. The City receives distributions from the State of New Mexico two months after the month of business activity, creating a built-in lag that shapes monthly monitoring.

New Mexico applies a statewide rate of 5.0 percent and returns 1.225 percent of collections from activity inside city limits. Officials track this specific increment because it has proven the least volatile portion of the tax. The same data feed five-year revenue forecasts and the annual budget process.

Revenue Growth Figures

Fiscal year 2021 growth had been projected at negative 3.4 percent because of pandemic effects. Unaudited final results showed positive growth of 1.7 percent instead. July 2021, the opening month of fiscal year 2022, recorded a 21.3 percent increase over July 2020 and a 4.6 percent gain over July 2019.

House Bill 479, effective July 1, 2019, raised the unrestricted municipal local option rate from 1.5 percent to 2.5 percent. The change gave local governments more flexibility, though Albuquerque continued to allocate revenues according to prior categories through fiscal year 2022.

Employment Indicators

The Albuquerque seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell from 6.9 percent in July to 5.9 percent in August. The national rate stood at 5.2 percent in July. The City incorporates these monthly figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics into its revenue models alongside quarterly forecasts prepared by the University of New Mexico Bureau of Business and Economic Research.

These indicators, together with construction and home-sales data, directly inform budget adjustments when actual receipts diverge from projections. The City publishes the figures on its economic dashboard so the public can follow the same metrics used for financial planning.