SEOUL: South Korea posted a budget surplus for two years in a row in fiscal 2016 as its tax revenue rose sharply on increased corporate and value added taxes, the finance ministry said Friday. The gross revenue that the government brought in last year came to 345 trillion won ($299.7 billion), while its expenditures totaled 332.2 trillion won, according to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance after closing its books for the fiscal year 2016. With 4.8 trillion won worth of the balance carried forward to the next year, the surplus reached 8 trillion won last year, up from 2.8 trillion won tallied in the previous year. Tax revenue amounted to 242.6 trillion won last year, exceeding the original target by 9.8 trillion won and increasing by a record 24.7 trillion won from a year earlier. The government collected 102.4 trillion won in non-tax income, some 6.8 trillion won shy of the goal.
The government said it removed various tax breaks through revised tax codes despite lackluster business performance and raised the tax base for the highest income bracket. Corporate tax jumped 15.7 percent on-year to 52.1 trillion won last year, while value added taxes amounted to 61.8 trillion won, up 14.2 percent from a year earlier. A 12.8 percent on-year gain in income tax also lent support to the uptick in total tax revenue, with real estate transfer tax income adding 15.4 percent to 13.7 trillion won.
