Government hopes for an increase of a billion in 2017 tax revenue
After having been accused of lack of transparency both by UTAO and the opposition parties, the government has revealed the forecast for the evolution of tax revenue in 2017.
Parliament has received the table of tax revenue that was missing from the report for the 2017 State Budget. After having been criticized both by the Budget Technical Support Unit (UTAO) and deputies from the Portuguese Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the Portuguese Democratic and Social Center Party-People’s Party (CDS-PP), and on the same day the minister of Finance Mário Centeno will be heard by the commission for the Budget, the government revealed, at last, the forecast for revenue:
"This revenue data breakdown is an additional informative element that was not a part of the SB reports until today and will, as well, allow for the monitoring of the 2017 budget execution in its relevant perspective for the goals Portugal has to comply with because of European law.”
The tax revenue of the State as a sub-sector should be a total of 40,403 million euros by the end of this year and rise to 41,594 million euros in 2017 – an increase of 2.9%.
This increase is mainly caused by the rise of indirect tax, which include tax on oil and energy products (ISP), VAT, vehicle tax (ISV), tobacco tax, tax on alcohol, stamp duty and the single road tax (IUC). The government expects to have 22,900 million euros in revenue by the end of the year and 23,705 million by end of 2017, which means an increase of 3.5%.
Concerning income and property taxation, there will be a very slight increase: 2.2%, going from 17,502 million this year to 17,889 million in 2017.
Mário Centeno will not yet present the table with an estimate of expenditures, justifying this decision with the fact these estimates usually have a significant margin of error – to prove his point, he presents the table for 2014, in which the difference between the estimate and the actual expense was larger than 1.6 billion euros.
