Online shopping proving profitable for a Tulsa woman

Monday, January 13th 2003, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

If sales tax receipts are any indication, the holiday shopping season was a bust. But as News on Six consumer reporter Rick Wells says sales tax receipts may not be the only measure of success.

Retailers were hoping for a big holiday shopping season to bring them out of what most agreed had been a dismal end of the year. Experts agree it just didn't happen, on the other hand.

"We saw about a 400% increase in this December over last December. So I think more people are taking advantage of the on-line savings and the convenience of being able to have their items shipped directly to their door." Maggie Boone runs an on-line business, â€˜dealhunting.comâ€™, that list sales, deals, rebates, and discounts for on line shoppers.

Her business was up 400% over last year. So people shopped somewhere maybe just not at the mall. Need some proof. Sales tax receipts were nowhere near projections. Tulsa's piece of the sales tax pie was 12% less than projected. $18,095,000 was the projection, just under $16-million was what we got. Almost $2.2-million short. More bad economic news for the city.

Maggie Boone has an interesting offer for city officials. Join her. She has a website she owns, â€˜Tulsa. netâ€™, nobody's using it. She'll let the city use it to operate the same kind of referral business she operates she'd get a small fee the city would get the rest. "The shoppers do what their doing anyway, by shopping on line, they could save even more money and at the same time. Be patriotic and be able to help give back to their city without having have to do any extra work, what so ever."

Why buck the trend toward on-line shopping? It could be a way to recoup some of the lost sales tax revenue.

We contacted the City of Tulsa. They were skeptical, but said the proposal was interesting, and they'd look into it. We'll let you know how it comes out.