An open records request sent to the comptroller's office turned up four letters, among other things, that went to the local government entities mentioned in our tax story: Dallas Area Rapid Transit, and the cities of Dallas, Sherman, and Stafford. Each included a line about "a large direct pay taxpayer," the amount in question, and a couple of boilerplate paragraphs about setting up payment schedules for the refunds (the state generally gives local governments a number of years — at no interest — to pay these things back).

Dallas' letter put the locally owed refund at $13.8 million. DART's was $13.2 million. Stafford, as we reported last week, is on the hook for $2.6 million, and the state wants the City of Sherman to repay $1.8 million. Those obligations total $31.3 million.

Their tax rates vary. Dallas and DART each levy a 1-cent tax. Stafford's local sales tax rate is 2 cents. Sherman's is 1.75 cents. In all cases, the state's rate is 6.25 cents. If you back out the numbers, using the local tax refund due and the local and state tax rates, you can figure out what the state got back, based on what it's demanding from the locals.

For instance, if Stafford, with a 2-cent sales tax, owes $2,557,340, then the state, with a 6.25-cent rate, over-collected $7,991,690. Texas Instruments' refund from that piece of this tax case, including the state and local sales taxes, was $10,549,031. The total for Sherman, figured up the same way, is $6,297,627. Dallas and DART present a particular problem: They overlap. Figured separately, the Dallas number would be $99.8 million and the DART number would be $95.6 million. Not all of DART is in Dallas, and vice-versa, and the comptroller's office didn't have those numbers handy when we called (they're working on it).

In the interest of caution, we kept the local sales tax number for the City of Dallas in our totals, but tossed the state sales tax number for the moment. Just assume, for now, that the DART collections for the state involved the same dollars collected for the city, and only count them once.

Without that Dallas number, the state owed Texas Instruments $96.7 million, in addition to the $31.3 million owed the company by the cities and DART. That means the state refunded TI at least $128.0 million, then went to the four local governments to get their share of the refund.