Puerto Rico’s general fund revenues from July through April total $6.4 billion, $105 million above budgeted estimates due to strong business tax and excise tax collections.
Puerto Rico receives most of its tax receipts in April. The government collected $1.35 billion of tax revenue in April, which is $93 million more than budgeted projections, according to a monthly revenue report compiled by the Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico.
The GDB is the commonwealth’s financing arm and fiscal adviser.
Fiscal 2011 will end June 30. For the first 10 months of fiscal 2011, corporate tax receipts totaling $1.24 billion came in $92 million above expectations and excise tax revenue totaling $407 million was $56 million higher. The 4% excise tax is a temporary levy on businesses not based in Puerto Rico that profit from products manufactured there, such as pharmaceutical companies. Lawmakers implemented the tax in January to lower personal income taxes as part of the commonwealth’s tax reform policy.
Healthy corporate and excise tax revenue helped offset sluggish individual-tax collections that came in $44 million below expectations from July through April. Year-to-date personal-tax receipts total $1.93 billion.
The $6.4 billion of general-fund revenue that Puerto Rico collected so far this fiscal year is $125 million more than the $6.28 billion the commonwealth received during the same period in fiscal 2010. The new excise tax helped boost total year-to-date general fund collections as personal income taxes and “other taxes” are $245 million and $111 million below fiscal 2010 collections, respectively.
“On a year-over-year basis, individuals’ tax collections decreased 11.2% during this time period as a result of reduced tax withholdings implemented by the tax reform,” according to the GDB.
So far, in fiscal 2011, corporate tax receipts are $69 million below the same period last year.
