The City of Tulsa is responsible for putting together yearly budgets to fund the core operations of the City. Every year, the Mayor - with the help of City Departments - put together a funding proposal that is then discussed, tweaked, and approved by the Tulsa City Council.
By law - the City cannot operate a deficit budget and everything must be balanced each year.
Once passed, the budget goes into effect on July 1 of each year.
The Fiscal Year 2026-2027 proposed budget includes funding for things like:
**Depending on potential adjustments to the proposed budget, it could take several days to weeks following Council approval to get the budget documents updated. The updated documents will be live on the City's budget page by July 1.**
Major Revenue Categories Include
Sales tax funds most day-to-day operations of the City, but the base rate doesn't fund large road improvements or other large capital projects. Historically, the City has relied on sales tax extensions (Improve Our Tulsa, Vision Tulsa) to fund those needs.
Inside the City limits of Tulsa, the Sales tax and Use tax is 8.517%, which is allocated between three taxing jurisdictions:
The 8.517% is what Tulsans can expect to pay for goods and services in Tulsa city limits. The rate decreases a bit for core grocery items due to recent updates to the State's tax policy.
It's important to note that Tulsa's base sales tax rate has been in place since 1980. The sales tax rate cannot be unilaterally changed by one person. Any changes to the sales tax must go before the City Council and be put on the ballot for voters to decide.
Utility rates are included in each year's budget, but are not decided by any one elected official. Rather, current rates and future increases are based on multi-year modeling, including considerations such as:
Rate adjustments for future years are first approved by the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority (TMUA) and the Tulsa Authority for the Recovery of Energy (TARE). These citizen-led boards spend each year reviewing services and future costs before approving future year rate structures. Once approved, the rate structures are included in the budget process. Because they are calculated strictly to cover the cost of service and ensure system reliability - the budget process largely leaves these previously approved rate adjustments untouched.
As background, the City's Utility Bill has charges for the following items:
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