Puerto Rico's net General Fund revenues came in 1% above the government's expectations in October.
October's revenue net collections were $675.9 million, $7.3 million more than budgeted.
Through the first four months of fiscal 2015 General Fund revenues were 1.2% below projections. This was an improvement from the status after three months, when they were 2% below projections.
The category with the greatest monthly monetary surplus over projections was individual income taxes, with a $40 million surplus. Earlier this year Puerto Rico passed a law to allow for income taxes for certain sorts of transactions to be prepaid from July 1 to Oct. 31 or July 1 to Dec. 31, depending on the transaction.
Individual income tax receipts were up $99.8 million, or 62.5%, from October 2013.
The category with the greatest monthly monetary shortfall was the tax on subsidiaries of foreign multinationals, known as the Act 154 tax, which was $20.6 million less than budgeted.
Sales and use tax collections for Puerto Rico, excluding the portion for the municipalities, totaled $114 million in October, 7.6% more than the sum for October 2013. Excluding the impact of last year&'s tax amnesty, the sales and use tax revenues in the first four months of this fiscal year were up 6.3% from a year earlier.
These revenues are not given to the General Fund in these early months of the fiscal year. Instead, they are directed to the Puerto Rico Sales Tax Financing Corp. (COFINA), to cover the debt service payments on COFINA bonds.
