Taxable retail sales finished up 7.5 percent for the period April through December in 2008 over 2007.

The report for January 2009 was even better: 15.08 percent above January 2008 taxable retail sales figures.

“Retail is alive in Austin,” Sandy Forstner said Thursday in a message to the Austin Area Chamber of Commerce board of directors.

If taxable retails sales are up, so, too, will the Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) receipts coming to the city of Austin.

Taxable sales are the amount of sales subject to sales tax. Taxable sales exclude exempt items, items sold for resale, items

sold for exempt purposes and items sold to exempt organizations.

The city collects one-half of one percent of the taxable retail sales with its LOST assessment.

The revenue source was coveted to address recurring flooding problems with permanent solutions.

LOST will terminate in 20 years or when the Austin City Council declares its goals met and the revenues are no longer needed.

LOST revenues started adding up in April 2007.

According to the city’s finance department, the city has collected $1.1-million in the first year, $1.2 million in the second and estimates another $2.4 million this year through March 2009.

Thus, the news is good on two fronts: Raising revenues to deal with flood issues and evidence Austin is weathering the recession.

Tom Dankert, the city’s finance director, shared the figures with Forstner, the Chamber’s executive director, Thursday morning, and Forstner gave directors a heads-up on more good news to come in the monthly Chamber Outlook newsletter due out next week.

“Any number of factors could be responsible for the increase in taxable retail sales in Austin,” Forstner said. “Certainly, the opening of the new Walmart Super Center store is one of them”

Forstner also speculated high gas prices last summer kept people shopping locally.

In addition, he said the Chamber’s Buy Mower, Grow Mower campaign also could have been a factor.

The news will be analyzed closely by the city — still navigating the perils of Local Government Aid cuts — and local business leaders, but it is more vindication for supporters of the LOST effort.

Eight years ago, Dankert predicted the city could raise about $880,000 year from LOST. That, of course, was before the economic downturn of late-2008, but early revenue figures suggest that estimate was conservative.

A lot is hinging on the success of LOST.

City officials and citizens supported LOST as a means of raising revenues to deal with recurring flooding problems after historic “century floods” occurred frequently: 2001, 2004 and 2007.

Now, the LOST revenues are growing, while the important taxable retail sales indicator suggests Austin may be recession-proof.

“These are,” Forstner said, “only percentages and while they are good, we don’t know the exact numbers yet.”

“I think, though, we can safely say ‘Hats off to the people of Austin and Mower County’,” he added. “Obviously, they show people support shopping locally.”

“With the Walmart store and the strip mall near Walmart, there are more shopping opportunities in Austin today, and it’s showing in the taxable retail sales report,” he concluded.