Puerto Rico’s July revenues came in 14% higher than those of July 2017, continuing a several month long pattern of Puerto Rico revenues coming in stronger than expected.
July General Fund net revenues were $741 million, compared to the total of $649 million in July 2017. The July 2018 total was also 13.9% above the budgeted projection for the month. July is the first month of Puerto Rico’s fiscal year.
The four biggest types of taxes were foreign corporate (Law 154) tax with $250 million, individual income taxes with $130 million, sales and use tax with $102 million, and corporate income taxes with $89 million.
Compared to a year earlier the foreign corporate tax collection was up 20.8% or $43 million. These were also 8.9% higher than the budgeted figure.
The Puerto Rico Treasury Department warned that it expected the foreign corporate tax collection in the coming months to be lower than in previous years.
The tax on motor vehicles total was 86.4% higher than July 2017 and 174% higher than the budgeted number. Treasury Department Secretary Teresita Fuentes said this was because of fleet sales and sales to rental car companies.
The sales and use tax brought in $239 million in July, though only a fraction of this went to the General Fund. The $239 figure was 11.8% higher than the total for July 2017. The Treasury said the two figures were not perfectly comparable because July 2018 includes a large taxpayer biweekly tax payment that came into force in the last fiscal year in August.
General fund revenues came in above projections from April to June. On that period, Puerto Rico Secretary of the Interior Raúl Maldonado said, “To a large extent the [revenue] increase is attributed to the temporary economic activity of companies associated with recovery tasks and the flow of insurer and federal government money after the hurricanes.”
