Baytown's sales tax is up 41 percent since 2019. The plants still pay more.

Where the numbers come from

Texas collects local sales tax with the state's and sends each city its share every month. The Texas Comptroller publishes those monthly allocations on the state's open data portal. We added them up by the year the city received them. Because a payment usually reflects sales from about two months earlier, "2025" here covers roughly November 2024 through October 2025. For Baytown, these totals cover 1.25 cents of the city's 2 cents of local sales tax: the general fund's 1 cent and the quarter-cent voters approved for street maintenance. The city's crime control, fire and development districts collect the other three-quarters of a cent, which the state reports separately and which is not counted here.

To adjust for inflation we used the federal consumer price index, which rose about 25.9 percent from 2019 to 2025.

Baytown's sales tax, year by year

• 2019: about $20.3 million.
• 2020: about $20.4 million.
• 2021: about $24.2 million.
• 2022: about $26.2 million.
• 2023: about $27.4 million.
• 2024: about $28.0 million.
• 2025: about $28.7 million.

The jump came in 2021, when payments rose nearly 19 percent. Growth was about 8 percent in 2022 and has slowed to about 2 to 4 percent a year since.

But sales tax is not the city's biggest source of money.

Payments from the industries outside the city limits are.

How the neighbors grew

Change in city sales tax allocations from 2019 to 2025:

• La Porte: up about 80 percent.
• League City: up about 72 percent, partly because it raised its city sales tax rate in October 2019.
• Friendswood: up about 67 percent.
• Pearland: up about 46 percent.
• Baytown: up about 41 percent.
• Deer Park: up about 37 percent.
• Houston: up about 32 percent.
• Seabrook: up about 31 percent.
• Pasadena: up about 26 percent.
• Mont Belvieu: up about 21 percent.

Baytown sits in the middle of the pack, ahead of Houston and Pasadena and behind the fastest-growing suburbs.

Where the city's money really comes from

Sales tax is not the city's biggest source of money. Payments from the industries outside the city limits are. For the general fund, which pays for police, fire, parks and most daily services, the largest single source is industry. The city has 90 industrial district agreements with industries just outside its limits, which make payments in lieu of taxes in exchange for limited protection from annexation. The city's adopted budget for fiscal 2027 expects about $69.25 million from those payments and one related economic development agreement, about 46 percent of the general fund's revenue. It expects about $27.7 million from current property taxes and about $25.6 million from the general sales tax, before about $1 million in sales tax rebates to businesses.

That is why the health of the plants matters to every city service, and why sales tax growth, steady as it is, is the smaller of the two engines.

Month to month

Single months swing. February 2025 came in about 53 percent above February 2024, and February 2026 fell about 22 percent from that high. Full years tell the story better than any one month.

Read the fine print

• These are allocations to the city, not total sales. Rates differ between cities, so compare the growth, not the dollar amounts.
• 2019 was a down year for Baytown, about 5 percent below 2018, which flatters the six-year comparison. Measured from 2018, growth to 2025 is about 35 percent.
• Baytown's figure leaves out its three district taxes; other cities' figures may include similar local taxes, so the ranking is a rough guide. We checked rate changes only where the state's rate table showed one.
• League City's rate rose from 1.75 to 2 percent in October 2019, which inflates its growth.
• The industrial district figure is the city's budgeted estimate, not a final number.
• Inflation uses the national consumer price index, not a Houston-area index.

Before you go

• When you shop in Baytown, part of every taxable dollar goes to the city, its street repairs and, through separate districts, to police, fire and emergency medical service, and economic development.
• The city posts its budget each year; the revenue summary shows where the money comes from.

More Baytown by the numbers: Same house, different city: what property tax really costs around Houston; Baytown is building. Here's what, where, and who's paying.; Baytown's bars and restaurants reported $22 million in drink sales last year.

Sources

• Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, Sales Tax Allocation, City, via the Texas Open Data Portal (https://data.texas.gov/resource/vfba-b57j.json)
• Texas Comptroller, Sales Tax Allocation, Tax Rates (https://data.texas.gov/resource/tmhs-ahbh.json)
• Texas Comptroller, Sales Tax Allocation: County, MTA, SPD (https://data.texas.gov/resource/qsh8-tby8.json)
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index annual averages (https://www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/data/consumerpriceindexannualandsemiannual_table.htm)
• City of Baytown, FY2027 Adopted Budget, General Fund revenue summary (https://www.baytown.org/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/1317)

En español

El estado le envió a Baytown $28.7 millones de impuesto sobre las ventas por 2025, frente a $20.3 millones en 2019, un aumento de cerca de 41 por ciento, o de unos 12 por ciento después de la inflación. Los pagos recibidos de enero a septiembre de 2026 van cerca de 5 por ciento arriba de los mismos meses de 2025. Pero la mayor fuente de dinero de la ciudad son los pagos de las industrias en los distritos industriales fuera de los límites de la ciudad: el presupuesto de 2027 espera unos $69.25 millones de esos pagos, más que el impuesto a la propiedad y el impuesto general sobre las ventas juntos.