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Bar, Restaurant Revenue Still Healthy Despite Smoking Ban

I'm reading up on South Dakota sales tax revenues (and how's your Sunday?). The December 2010 sales tax numbers show that, in the first full month of the new South Dakota indoor smoking ban, eating and drinking places saw 86.1 million dollars of business. That's up 4.0% from December 2009. This improvement continues the November trend of more restaurant and bar business than the previous year.

These numbers suggest that while, as in any given month, we can find anecdotal examples of specific bars and restaurants seeing slumps, the general trend across the state is more bar and restaurant business... even under the iron heel of "leftist... un-American, anti-freedom" public health laws.

4 Comments

  1. Nick Nemec 2011.01.23

    Good news. How do the overall numbers stack up against last years?

  2. caheidelberger Post author | 2011.01.23

    Good question, Nick! I didn't see a full 2010 report on the page where I got the December report. I'm scanning through other documents right now, but the state's website is sending me its PDFs r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y today... another reason all budget data should be in nice simple HTML tables! Stay tuned!

  3. Nick Nemec 2011.01.23

    I hate PDFs they are enough for me to question "Do I really need to know this?"

  4. caheidelberger Post author | 2011.01.23

    Still looking... but I can tell you Holabird reported no taxable sales in FY2010.

    For December, the state as a whole saw a 25% jump over December 2009, thanks in large part to a tripling in electric, gas, and sanitary services.

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