Employment growth and rising incomes boost German tax revenues

June is an important month in the tax calendar - and collections this year were bubbling over: the Federal Ministry of Finance has reported that tax receipts in June 2019 rose 6,8 percent, compared with this time last year.  

German tax income up in June 2019

Despite a phase of fairly sluggish growth, tax income this month was higher than expected. The sharp increase in receipts from value-added taxes (VATs) was particularly striking: The volume of domestic value-added tax increased by 6,9 percent and the revenues from import VAT rose by another 0.9 percent. 

In addition, payroll tax continued to increase considerably this June, with gross revenue from this tax rising by 6,2 percent to a total 19.498 million euros. This reflects the continuing employment growth and rising incomes in Germany. Child benefits - which are financed from wage taxes receipts, therefore also increased this year. 

Total tax revenue up three percent

June is an important tax month, as both businesses and self-employed workers must complete their tax returns and transfer their payments to the tax offices. Income from both corporate income tax and assessed income tax were higher than last year, according to the report - corporation tax by 1,6 percent and assessed income by 5,6 percent.

For the entire first half of the year, total tax revenue increased by three percent to 360,6 billion euros. This increase is slightly higher than the 2,4 percent estimated for the whole year.