The Department of Finance have published a report on the tax revenue forecasting methodology currently employed by them. The Comptroller and Auditor General had been critical of the discrepancies between budget tax revenue figures and actual figures in his 2006 Annual Report.

The report acknowledges that there has been a significant divergence between forecast tax revenue and the actual tax revenue outturn over the period 1999 -2006, with the largest forecasting errors to be found in CGT, stamp duty and corporation tax.

The report concludes that “the lack of appropriate economic drivers for stamp duty and CGT coupled with the exceptionally strong performance of the property market in recent years have been large contributory factors in the excess over target of revenue from these sources.”

Prior to publishing the above report, the Department of Finance published expected Exchequer tax receipts for 2008. At €48.9bn, tax receipts are expected to increase from €47.2bn in 2007.