Taiwan’s tax revenues last month posted an increase of NT$41.9 billion (US$1.31 billion), or 56.5 percent, from a year earlier — its largest in history — with business taxes seeing record growth of NT$21.7 billion, or 101.1 percent year-on-year, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
Last month’s tax revenue totaled NT$116 billion, including NT$43.2 billion from business tax, NT$19.8 billion from personal income tax and NT$11.1 billion from securities transaction tax, the ministry said.
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The ministry attributed the increase to the recovering global economy and the low comparison base with last year, when Lunar New Year was celebrated and the global financial crisis hit the nation.
“The substantial increase in business tax was the result of a rebound in private consumption and increased domestic sales,” Lin Lee-jen (林麗貞), head of the ministry’s statistics department, told a press conference yesterday.
Another reason was that a total of NT$17.1 billion in business tax collected by customs were not factored into account books last year because of the Lunar New Year holidays, Lin said.
With the real estate sector booming, capital gains from rising land value last month also rose NT$4.2 billion, or 162 percent, to a record high of NT$6.8 billion since July 2007, ministry statistics showed.
“While increasing year-on-year last month, commodity taxes, securities transaction taxes and tariffs all posted a monthly contraction,” Lin said.
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Revenue from commodity taxes totaled NT$8.9 billion last month, down from NT$13.1 billion in December, and securities transaction taxes contracted NT$500 million, or 4.3 percent, from a month earlier to NT$11.1 billion.
Customs tariffs, meanwhile, totaled NT$6.1 billion, posting a decline of NT$1.7 billion from a month earlier.
Last month, the central government collected a total tax of NT$76.4 billion, representing an annual increase of NT$26.5 billion, or 53.2 percent, while tax revenue at local governments rose 80.7 percent from the previous year to NT$32.7 billion, the statistics showed.
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