The cash surplus continues to grow as taxes continue to flow

Treasury coffers continued to grow over the past month, taking the surplus to €5bn so far this year, new figures released this afternoon show.

An increasingly gloomy economic environment has so far failed to curb strong tax receipts, while record profits generated by multinationals continue to underpin strong returns.

The surplus of €5bn recorded up to the end of July compares to a surplus of €4.2bn in the six months to the end of June. The performance also reflects the loss of many pandemic-related financial supports, which led to a decrease in spending.

The strong performance is sure to fuel calls for a budget that will ease the painful impact of the cost of living crisis on people across the country. Rising inflation is eating away at people’s wages as many grapple with energy and fuel costs, which have skyrocketed since last year.

Even on a rolling 12-month basis to the end of July, the budget surplus is 3.4 billion euros.

Gross sales for the seven months ended July reached 58.2 billion euros. That is 5.7 billion euros or 11 percent more than in the same period of 2021.

The latest figures show that 6.6 billion euros in taxes were collected in July, which is 15 percent or 900 million euros more than in July last year. The previous tax revenue in 2022 now amounts to 43.5 billion euros. That is 8.3 billion euros or 23.5 percent more than in the first seven months of 2021.

Corporate tax receipts last month were €200 million – just up from July 2021. But corporate tax receipts for the first seven months of 2022 now stand at €9 billion, more than €3 billion more than in the same period of the previous year .

The government said the rise reflected “significant increases” in multinational companies’ profits.

Corporation tax revenue accounted for almost 23 per cent of total tax collected in Ireland last year.

The Treasury Department’s chief economist warned last month that officials were “very concerned” about the country’s reliance on corporate tax revenues. Department Chief Economist John McCarthy predicted that the Treasury Department is likely to receive between €18 billion and €19 billion in corporate taxes this year. That’s about five times what it was a decade ago.

Tax data released today shows that 2.5 billion euros in income taxes were collected by the Treasury last month, up 19 percent from July last year.

July is a month in which VAT is due and the last month recorded revenues of 2.8 billion euros. That was 13 percent more than in July 2021. Cumulative VAT receipts for this year are now 11.9 billion euros, which is 23 percent more than in the first seven months of 2021. However, the growth in VAT receipts has slowed down over the past month slowed significantly due to the ongoing comparative impact of the pandemic-related constraints on the economy over the past year are beginning to fade.