Tax revenues last month totaled NT$93.4 billion (US$3.17 billion), down 18.9 percent from a year earlier and 14.8 percent from December, because of the Lunar New Year holiday, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
However, the revised figures for December helped drive up last year’s aggregate tax revenues to NT$1.7646 trillion, up 8.8 percent from 2010 and the highest on record, the ministry said.
“The Lunar New Year holiday reduced last month’s number of working days to only 15, five days less than the previous year, which dragged down tax revenues,” Hsu Ray-lin (許瑞琳), deputy director of the ministry’s statistics department, told a press conference.
Sales tax revenues last month dropped 15.4 percent, or NT$6.8 billion, from a year earlier to NT$37.7 billion, marking the largest decline by value among all categories, followed by revenues from the securities transaction tax and land value increment tax.
Securities transaction tax revenues last month slid by NT$5.2 billion, or 56.7 percent, from a year earlier to NT$3.9 billion, while land value increment tax revenues declined by NT$3.5 billion, or 39.3 percent year-on-year, to NT$5.4 billion, the ministry said in a report.
Since last year’s Lunar New Year holiday fell in February, Hsu said it would be more accurate to gauge the trend in tax revenues by January to February data with the same period last year.
The ministry also released its revenue target for this year of NT$1.8225 trillion. Last year’s revenue of NT$1.6959 trillion exceeded its target by NT$68.7 billion.
The nation’s tax burden — or tax revenue as a percentage of GDP — rose to 12.8 percent last year from 11.9 percent in 2010, ministry data showed. The burden was at a historic low of 11.7 percent in 2003.
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