What would a sales tax shortfall cost Guadalupe County?

Guadalupe.News calculation from the adopted budget; balances assume all other figures hold and the full gap reduces fund balance. Rounded to the nearest $1,000.

With all else equal and the gap fully absorbed by fund balance, a 5% miss would lower the projected ending balance from $39.440 million to $38.525 million. A 10% miss would equal $1.83 million and, under the same assumptions, put the ending balance at $37.610 million. These are illustrations, not forecasts of collections or county decisions.

Who pays and who benefits

The General Fund is the budget at issue here. The calculation assigns each hypothetical missing sales tax dollar to a lower ending balance; it does not model a change in county services or taxes. That makes the fund balance the useful comparison, not a predicted household bill.

What has to go right

FY26’s $16.2 million sales tax estimate was $2.1 million below FY27’s estimate. The county’s FY27 plan therefore counts on a higher sales tax figure than the earlier budget did. The county budget archive provides the prior budget context for that comparison.

The adopted budget’s sales tax estimate is the benchmark for tracking actual FY27 receipts. If receipts meet that figure and the other budget assumptions hold, the base-case ending balance remains $39.440 million. If receipts miss, the table shows only the mechanical effect of that one change.

What the records don’t say

A sensitivity test cannot tell readers whether sales tax will come in short or how commissioners would respond if it does. The next useful record is a county report comparing actual FY27 collections with the budget estimate and updating the General Fund balance. Readers can inspect the FY27 adopted budget for the revenue and balance figures used in this calculation.