LISBON: Portugal’s public sector budget deficit, in public accounting terms, was in the first four months of the year €314 million larger than in the same period of 2016, at €1.931 billion, the Ministry of Finance announced.
In a written statement, the ministry said the increase was above all the result of a €530-million increase in reimbursements to taxpayers from various levies, in particular personal income tax and value-added tax.
Income-tax reimbursements swelled by €215 million, as a new automatic system this year for the first time enabled taxpayers with no income other than from employment or pensions, and who had no dependants, to access a tax return already filled in that they could then validate and submit more quickly.
In addition, there was this year for the first time a single deadline for income tax returns, which could be submitted between 1 April and 31 May, independent of the types of income involved. That means that taxpayers who until now were only able to submit their return in May were now able to do it in April – also contributing to a faster turnaround with reimbursements.
VAT reimbursements, meanwhile, swelled by €289 million, as the average time within which taxpayers were reimbursed was 20 days between January and April, several days less than a year earlier.
On the spending side, in the first four months of this year, primary expenditure (that is, excluding debt payments) was up 0.8% on the year – a much smaller increase than the 5% foreseen in the state budget for the year as a whole. Among the most important types of spending, public sector investment was up 12.4%.
