The government of Jamaica’s revenues surged an astounding 105 percent in April, this year over inflows over 2020 and an impressive 65 percent higher than inflows for April 2019 and suggest that the local economy is on a strong rebound if the April performance continues.
The 2021 inflows amounted to $75 billion and exceeded the forecast of $72 billion by $3.4 billion and are the highest monthly inflows for the past three years except for the months of March.
In April 2019, the Government of Jamaica collected just over $46 billion in revenues and a mere $37 billion in 2020, the latter being after the economy took a major body blow in March that year, the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and the closing of the country’s borders that effectively looked down the tourist industry.
Taxes collected from Income and profits delivered $1.1 billion more than budget in April, with all categories performing above budget. The production and consumption category delivered a $1 billion increase and Production and consumption taxes contributed $1.3 billion more in revenues.
Corporate taxes jumped 32 percent to $1.4 billion, a lot better than the $903 million collected in 2019 and $1.08 in April 2020. PAYEE is up 6 percent or $373 million on a budget of $5.9 billion but is up 13 percent over the 2020 intake of $5.54 billion. Taxes on interest rose a strong 20 percent over budget to $1.7 billion. Special Consumption Taxes on local goods spiked nearly 9 percent to $3.6 billion, education taxes outperformed budget by 8 percent to reach $2.6 billion and GCT on local goods and services was up just 3 percent to $7.7 billion, but that is still well below inflows of $9 billion April 2019 when the GCT rate was 10 percent higher than the current rate of 15 percent.
Customs duty ran 13.7 percent ahead of forecast at $3.3 billion and remained below inflows of $3.5 billion in April 2019, but higher than the $2.6 billion collected in 2020. GCT on imports is up 8.5 percent above budget to hit $6.9 billion and much better than the $5.3 billion last year. Special Consumption Tax on imports outperformed the budget by 5.6 percent to reach $3.3 billion and betters last year’s intake of $3 billion. Travel tax is up a stunning $34.4 percent above forecast to end at $621 million but well off the nearly $2 billion earned in April 2019 and $1 billion last year.
April 2021, performance is just slightly below the record inflows of $85 billion reached in March this year, as well as the $82 billion outturn for March 2020 and March 2019, with $84 billion.
The magnitude of this year’s performance can be measured with the 2020 fiscal year when the economy was operating at full capacity compared to April 2020. The highest inflows in that year were in June with $60 billion, September $63 billion and December $64 billion.
No new taxes for Jamaicans
Collector of Taxes office, Constant Spring, Kingston.
Based on developments on the fiscal operations this fiscal year, it seems that government was well on the way to enjoying a bumper reaping in 2016/17 fiscal year of higher revenues and lower interest cost that seemed adequate to meet the proposed tax break of the tax free $1.5 billion.
With the first quarter revenues and expenditure in the data is confirming what I was saying and is indicating that the naysayers are far from as informed as some would want the public to believe. What the early data is suggesting is that the economy seems to be performing better than in recent past and more importantly, that there was no need for any new taxes for this fiscal year and none will be needed to fund the rest of the personal tax break to be effected in 2017/18.
The simple reason is, savings on interest cost, with lower interest rates on government debt and an 11 percent rise in revenues over the 2015 intake, equal to an 8 percent increase above budget for the current fiscal year, will translate to $46 billion in added revenues and interest savings over the planned amounts. That will be more than enough to fund the increase tax break to come and to do without the NHT special payment. But that is not all if positive economic growth continues into 2017 revenues will rise some more probably with an additional $30 billion.
What the data is showing, is that the country has been failing from lack of thinking outside familiar territory.