It wasn’t a very happy holiday season for California’s shoppers.
Sales tax collection stats for 2022’s final quarter showed consumers were cautious about how they spent money.
California’s sales tax collectors say they took in $20 billion on purchases of all taxable goods and services in the fourth quarter, up 7% in a year. Tax collections are a fairly good measure of what’s being bought across the state, though they do miss a key slice of spending – services from personal care to entertainment that isn’t taxed.
The year-end growth was a slight improvement over the third quarter’s 6%. So what’s the problem?
For starters, inflation ran 7% in the