Tax revenues in the first two months of this year saw their largest decline since 2009, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
Tax revenues slid 2.5 percent from a year earlier, dropping to NT$167.6 billion (US$5.68 billion) and only reaching 86.7 percent of the government’s budget target, the ministry said in a report.
Hsu Ray-lin (許瑞琳), deputy director of the ministry’s statistics department, said whether -overall tax revenues would reach the government’s budget target of NT$1.8225 trillion would not become clear until May or June.
Last month, tax revenues totaled NT$74.1 billion, up 31 percent from a year ago, on the back of rising revenues from business income and securities transaction taxes.
“A total of NT$5.2 billion in commodity tax payments have not been passed through accounts yet, further driving down tax revenues,” Hsu told a press conference, -adding that otherwise, total tax revenue in the first two months would have equaled the previous year.
Commodity tax revenue fell 11.7 percent, or NT$2.6 billion, from a year earlier to NT$19.7 billion in the first two months, the report said.
Revenues from business income tax also declined 57 percent, or NT$2 billion, from the previous year, to NT$1.5 billion in the first two months because of the high comparative base last year, data showed.