June’s sales tax collections came in $200,000 over budget, less than a 1 percent increase. That’s the fourth month in a row that revenue met or exceeded the budget. For the year, we’re down 2.8 percent from the budgeted figures.

All of which is good news, especially since we started out the year so badly. But let’s not get too excited, since most of the sales tax happiness can be traced to one month — May, when we exceeded the budgeted figure by 7.5 percent. Throw that out, and we had one month that beat the budget, and three months that met it exactly.

The particulars: Our handy sales tax chart is here. The raw numbers are on the state comptroller Web site and are listed about two months ahead, so the figure given for August is money collected in June. The sales tax accounts for about 22 percent of the city general budget; another 43 percent comes from property tax receipts.