Gov rakes in €1.2bn extra in taxes in 2014
The Government took in €1.2 billion more in taxes than expected last year.
And despite massive bailouts at the end of the year to cover over-spending in Health and other Departments, overall Government expenditure was €840m more than budgeted for.
At the end of December the coalition had to borrow €8.2 bn to make up the difference between what the country had spent compared to tax revenue.
But that was €3.3 bn euro better than a year earlier, and was actually €4.6 bn less when one-off transactions were excluded.
Nearly all taxes proved better than expected, with Capital Gains Tax outperforming estimates by more than 40%.
The one exception was the Local Property Tax, but finance chiefs claim that is down to bad estimates on their parts, rather than people not paying it.
Under Troika rules the deficit for last year was to be below 4.7%. Exact figures will be dependent on GDP growth calculated by the CSO, but the Department of Finance estimates it is likely to be as low as 4%.
