ORLANDO, FLORIDA – Orange County Comptroller Phil Diamond announced today that Tourist Development Tax collections received by Orange County for the May 2021 TDT collection month were $16,890,000. That is a 1,303.5% increase over May 2020.


Month-over-month, May collections were lower than April collections by $142,100. In addition, May’s collections were $5,721,000, or 25.3% less than our last pre-pandemic May. In fact, this amount is less than we have collected in any pre-pandemic May month since 2014. As shown in the chart below, collections are rebounding, but still below Fiscal Year 2018-19 levels.

The month of May marked another milestone in the recovery – this is the first month since the start of the pandemic that the County did not have to use TDT reserves to offset TDT funding obligations. As shown in the attached “TDT Cash Reserve Summary,” the Renewal and Replacement Reserve increased for the month of May by $32,233. The County has used over $145 million of reserves to meet its TDT obligations since the start of the pandemic. That has caused our “Other Authorized Uses” reserves to decrease from $181 million to $36 million during that time. So, this is welcome news and hopefully a sign of things to come.
We will release the June TDT collections report in early August.

  1. Debt service reserves are restricted for debt service only and equal the maximum annual debt service payment.
  2. The County has committed to maintaining a reserve for property replacement equal to 4% of the Convention Center’s gross physical plant and equipment-excluding construction in progress. This Renewal and Replacement Reserve component is currently fully funded at $61,688,287.

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