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10-13C
Breaking stories
Tax take on target as revenues beat expectations
By Paul O’Brien, Political Editor
Michael Noonan has expressed confidence that this year’s tax take will meet expectations after figures for the first six months of the year showed revenues were €507 million ahead of target.
The Department of Finance had expected the tax take to the end of June to have reached €16.5bn. Instead, it exceeded €17bn — 3.1% above expectations.Income tax, corporation tax and capital gains tax were all ahead of expectations, but stamp duty was below target, reflecting the continuing weakness of the property market.
The finance minister said that, “all in all”, the performance of tax revenues in the first half of the year was “encouraging”. He said his department believed the end-year target of €36.3bn was achievable.
“There are significant targets to meet in the second half of the year, but tax revenue is on an upward trajectory and at this point I am confident that our overall tax revenue target for 2012 will be achieved.”
However, the figures were not without problems. Day-to-day (current) spending across government departments was €474m, or 2.3%, higher than expectations.
Finance said this was largely due to pressures in the departments of social protection and health, whose budgets are coming under strain because of the continuing unemployment crisis and the increasing numbers seeking medical cards.
Day-to-day spending at social protection, for example, was €320m higher than it was supposed to be for the first six months of the year.
Day-to-day spending at health was €145m more than it was supposed to be.
But Public Expenditure Minister Brendan Howlin said overall department expenditure was less than 1% ahead of target.
The figures also showed the ongoing pressures on the public purse caused by borrowing costs.
Debt-servicing costs ran to €4.5bn to the end of June.