THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Revenues from TRAIN exceed 2018 target

Revenues from TRAIN exceed 2018 target

ADDITIONAL revenues from the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) Act exceeded the government’s target by 8.1 per cent in 2018 even as the law also allowed taxpayers to take home more money with their lower personal income tax rates.

In a statement last week, the Department of Finance (DOF) quoted its strategy, economics and results group (SERG) as saying that the TRAIN law’s net revenues last year amounted 68.4 billion peso (Bt41.35 billion), higher than the 63.3-billion peso goal.
The DOF’s SERG was led by Finance Undersecretary Karl Kendrick Chua, who spearheaded the push for the Duterte administration’s first of seven tax reform packages.
“The largest gains were seen in tobacco excise, auto excise and documentary stamp tax collections. Personal income tax collections were also higher than expected due to better compliance and an increase in the number of registered taxpayers. Taken together, these highest gainers contributed around 51.5 billion peso of the 68.4-billion peso in additional revenue from TRAIN,” the DOF said.
Auto excise taxes surpassed target by 6.2 billion peso, while collections from higher documentary stamp taxes were above target by 4.7 billion peso.
“Accounting for value-added tax from additional spending, estimated at 24.6 billion peso, which was due to additional take-home pay as a result of lower personal income taxes, TRAIN revenue has far exceeded its target, providing additional public resources for infrastructure and human capital development programmes,” the DOF said.
In all, the restructured personal income tax system that raised the tax-exempt cap to 50,000 peso allowed workers to receive an additional 111.7 billion peso last year, according to the DOF.
Citing its previous estimates, the DOF said “the implementation of TRAIN gave a combined 12 billion peso per month in additional income to the country’s individual taxpayers, most of them compensation earners, and in unconditional cash transfers to the poorest households and senior pensioners.”


 

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