Surplus tax revenue last year reached NT$495 billion (US$16.25 billion), beating the government’s target by 18.2 percent, mainly due to hefty gains from corporate and personal income taxes, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
There was a 12 percent increase to NT$3.22 trillion in tax revenue for the whole of last year, even though tax revenues for last month shrank 15 percent from a year earlier amid an ongoing economic slowdown, the ministry said.
Department of Statistics Deputy Director-General Chen Yu-feng (陳玉豐) said impressive GDP growth in 2021 helped boost corporate and personal incomes last year because of time lags in dividend distribution.
Photo: Wu Chia-jung, Taipei Times
Corporate income tax revenue last month declined 10.4 percent year-on-year, while personal income tax revenue fell 5.1 percent, as global inflation and monetary tightening hit local manufacturing firms, the backbone of the nation’s exports.
Tax revenue gained public attention recently as pundits called for stimulus measures using excess tax revenue to expand private consumption and offset this year’s poor exports.
Altogether, revenue generated from stamp, liquor, house, land, business and entertainment taxes all more than doubled last year from a year earlier, Chen said.
A quick recovery in domestic demand and a low comparison base in 2021 made the improvement more conspicuous, she said.
The nation earned record-high tax revenue last year, even as securities transaction tax revenue tumbled 36.3 percent to NT$175.6 billion, Chen said, adding that the sum still ranked the second highest in history.
The local stock market has in the past few years gained regional and global importance, thanks to the Taiwanese semiconductor firms’ leading posistions.
At the same time, land value gain tax revenue dropped 15.4 percent annually to NT$93 billion last year, in line with a 13.5 percent drop in taxable cases to 89,820, Chen said.
Sales tax revenue proved another drag because the government cut tax rates on several imported oil and raw materials to ease inflation pressure, she said.
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