Tax revenue last month totaled NT$214.7 billion (US$7.05 billion), rising 5.9 percent from the same period a year earlier on the back of record-high tariffs and inheritance taxes as demand for imported vehicles rose, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
The data were in line with a boom in vehicles sales, a chill in property transactions and signs of a recovery on the local bourse, ministry statistics official Liang Kuan-shuan (梁冠璇) told an online media briefing.
Tariffs and inheritance taxes, unusual revenue growth drivers, spiked 30.6 percent and 97.2 percent year-on-year to NT$14.9 billion and NT$5.2 billion respectively, Liang said, adding that it was not clear whether the uptrend would continue.
Photo: Clare Cheng, Taipei Times
Tariffs from imported vehicles totaled NT$4.1 billion, Liang said.
Vehicles packed local ports waiting for their owners, a rare sight after port congestion amid COVID-19 lockdowns ended, she said.
Car imports also helped boost the sales tax total by 20.2 percent to NT$14.7 billion, she said.
The number of new license plates issued last month more than doubled to 44,161, Chinese-language media reported earlier.
The ministry declined to supply details for the surge in inheritance taxes except to say there were three cases that generated more than NT$100 million.
Inheritance tax rates are unpredictable, it added.
By contrast, land value increment taxation totaled NT$6.9 billion, down 36 percent from a year earlier, as taxable cases decreased 22.9 percent to 49,552, consistent with a cooling property market, Liang said.
Taxes from securities transactions, a gauge of stock investment interest, shrank 19.5 percent to NT$17.6 billion, reversing a rebound in February, ministry data showed.
The February rebound in securities transactions had a lot to do with the effect of national holidays, so the data were not overly significant, Liang said.
While daily turnover continued its negative cyclical movements, the pace of retreat has tapered off, she said, adding that things might improve as evidenced by TAIEX rallies in the past few weeks.
In the first quarter, tax revenue totaled NT$487.2 billion, a 0.9 percent increase from the same period last year, the ministry said.
The total was 15.9 percent of this year’s budget, 13.5 percent ahead of the schedule, it said.
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