Tax revenues last month rose NT$1.9 billion (US$59.7 million), or 2.1 percent, from a year earlier to NT$93.1 billion, with land incremental value taxes posting the largest growth, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
Taxes on capital gains from rising land value climbed NT$2.2 billion, or 59.5 percent, year-on-year, to NT$6 billion last month, customs tariffs increased NT$1.7 billion, or 31.1 percent, to NT$7.1 billion and commodity taxes climbed 10.7 percent to NT$13.3 billion, the ministry’s data showed.
Cumulative tax revenues in the first four months of the year rose NT$51.7 billion, or 15.4 percent, from a year earlier to NT$388.5 billion, resulting in a budget surplus of NT$10.8 billion, or 2.9 percent higher than the fiscal budget set for that period, the ministry said.
Given tax collections to date, “we expect to reach our full-year budget goal of NT$1.617 trillion,” Hsu Ray-lin (許瑞琳), deputy head of the ministry’s statistics department, told a press briefing, adding that it would represent a nearly 5 percent increase in tax revenues compared with last year.
Last year, the treasury saw a tax shortfall of more than NT$250 million as it collected a total of NT$1.53 trillion, which was lower than its goal of NT$1.784 trillion, Hsu said.
In the first four months of the year, land incremental value tax revenues totaled NT$24.6 billion, up NT$12 billion or 93.6 percent from a year earlier.
“The 93.6 percent gain was the largest growth since 2005 for the same period of time,” Hsu said.
Revenues from business taxes in the first four months rose NT$17.6 billion, or 28.3 percent, year-on-year, to NT$79.7 billion, as domestic consumption recovered from the economic downturn, the ministry’s data showed.
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