Puerto Rico’s fiscal 2010 tax revenues are on target to collect $3.4 billion of tax receipts from July through December, $10 million above budgeted estimates.
While total collections through December are above earlier projections, the commonwealth generated $3.68 billion of tax revenue during the same period in 2008, a difference of $270 million.
Better than expected non-resident withholdings, business tax collections, and other tax revenue helped offset sluggish personal income tax and motor vehicle tax revenue streams, according to the Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico.
The general fund received $45 million less in sales tax receipts than budgeted. Lawmakers in the first quarter of 2009 increased the sales tax dedication that backs sales tax bonds to 2.75 cents from one cent. Fiscal 2010 began July 1.
Sales tax collections in December totalled $118.48 million, $1.36 million less than the same month in 2008. The commonwealth received $1.09 billion of total sales tax receipts in 2009, a roughly $30 million decrease compared to the $1.12 billion collected in 2008, according to the GDB.
The Puerto Rico Sales Tax Financing Corp. sold $1.82 billion of subordinate sales tax bonds on Jan. 27. That amount is higher than the $1.4 billion of subordinate debt the corporation, known by its Spanish acronym as COFINA, originally anticipated selling.
COFINA has $5.2 billion of outstanding senior-lien sales tax bonds and $6.42 billion of outstanding subordinate sales-tax debt. It has about $700 million of bonding capacity under its senior-lien credit, according to Standard & Poor’s, and some $400 million of subordinate bonding capacity after last month’s sale.
