Tourists contributed $2.1B to Southern Nevada coffers in 2016

By Thomas Moore

Tuesday, May 9, 2017 | 11:49 a.m.

Southern Nevada’s governments would have been $2.1 billion poorer if no tourists had come to Las Vegas in 2016.

That was the lead nugget from a presentation on the impact of tourism on public revenue conducted by Jeremy Aguero, a principal for Applied Analysis, at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority board on Tuesday.

In his presentation, Aguero divided that money into two large buckets. The first included money from sales- and use-tax collections on activities both tourists and locals engage in such as dining and general shopping.

The second bucket is filled with money from industry-specific tax collections on activities tourists mainly engage in, such as gaming, hotel and live entertainment.

About $752 million was poured into the sales- and use-tax bucket, Aguero’s report found, from visitors to Southern Nevada in fiscal 2016.

The industry-specific bucket held $1.4 billion worth of tourist money for the fiscal year 2016, Aguero said. When such tax revenue from the entire state is counted, the bucket was holding $2.2 billion.

Those numbers do not include property taxes, which Aguero broke out from the other tax revenue. According to his study, seven of the 10 highest assessed individual taxpayers are resorts companies. They are:

1. MGM Resorts International: Assessed value was $3.6 billion, taxable value. $10.2 billion

2. NV Energy: Assessed value $2 billion, taxable value $5.7 billion

3. Caesars Entertainment: Assessed value $1.9 billion, taxable value $5.3 billion

4. Las Vegas Sands Corp.: Assessed value $1 billion, taxable value $2.8 billion

5. Wynn Resorts: Assessed value $0.9 billion, taxable value $2.6 billion

6. Station Casinos: Assessed value $0.7 billion, taxable value $2 billion

7. Nevada Property 1, LLC (Cosmopolitan): Assessed value $0.4 billion, taxable value $1.1 billion

8. Eldorado Energy: Assessed value $0.4 billion, taxable value $1.1 billion

9. Boyd Gaming: Assessed value $0.3 billion, taxable value $0.9 billion

10. Howard Hughes Corp.: Assessed value $0.3 billion, taxable value $0.9 billion

According to the Clark County Assessor’s office, the taxable value of a property is the market value of the land and the cost of improvements less statutory depreciation. The assessed value is based on calculations that vary depending on where you live in Nevada.