Mesa's tax take grows even as construction collections slip

Mesa is collecting more tax money this year than last, and retail sales account for nearly 4 in 5 dollars of the increase. Construction was the main category headed the other way, with contracting tax revenue coming in $2.9 million below a year earlier.

The East Valley city took in $228.9 million in taxes from January through August 2026, according to Mesa's monthly tax revenue file. Over the same months of 2025, it took in $216.5 million.

That works out to a gain of $12.4 million, or 5.7%. The money comes from a mix of business categories, and they did not all move together.

Where did the extra money come from?

Mostly from retail. Retail sales tax revenue, which includes use tax, rose $9.7 million through August, an increase of 8%. That made retail the first among Mesa's tax categories by the size of its dollar gain.

Retail alone made up 78.1% of the citywide increase. Take it out of the picture, and Mesa's year would look far flatter.

Other categories added smaller sums from January through August:

• Utilities: up $2 million
• Rentals: up $1.9 million
• Restaurants and bars: up $756,275, a rise of 3.6%
• Hotel and motel bed tax: up $453,606

What lost ground?

Construction. Contracting tax revenue fell 9.4% from January through August, leaving it $2.9 million short of the same stretch of 2025.

That drop was bigger, in dollars, than the gains at restaurants and bars and at hotels and motels put together. Every dollar construction gave back had to be covered by other categories before the citywide total could grow at all.

Is the gain just a matter of tax rates?

No. Mesa also reports what its collections would have been at constant 2018 tax rates, a figure the city calls the comparable amount. On that basis, revenue still rose 5.7%, the same pace as the raw total.

So the increase holds up even when rate changes are set aside.

The year-over-year comparison also plays out month by month. The chart below sets each month of 2026, from the January start through August deep in the Valley's summer, beside the same month of 2025, so readers can see which months carried the citywide total.

A city budget leaning on shoppers

These collections are part of the money the city has to spend on services. The mix matters as much as the total: through August, Mesa's gain rested heavily on what people bought at retail, while the money tied to construction shrank.

About the data

We used Mesa's monthly tax revenue file and summed collections by category for January through August 2026 and January through August 2025. We compared the totals in dollars and percent, ranked categories by dollar change and calculated each category's share of the citywide change. We also compared the city's comparable amounts, which hold tax rates at 2018 levels.

• Figures are as reported in the city's monthly file and may be revised in later updates.
• Dollar amounts are not adjusted for inflation, so some of the gain may reflect higher prices rather than more sales.
• The tax data shows how much each category brought in; it can't explain the reasons collections rose or fell.

Use tax: a tax on goods bought for use in Mesa when sales tax wasn't collected at the time of purchase; the city counts it with retail sales. Comparable amount: the city's estimate of what tax collections would have been if tax rates had stayed at 2018 levels. Contracting tax: tax revenue the city collects from construction contracting activity.

Sources

• The publisher's Socrata open-data portal (named with each dataset): Citywide Tax Revenue by Report Month, latest period 2026-10-23, released Oct. 23, 2026; retrieved Oct. 24, 2026. Data