While April is by no means the busiest time of the year for tax receipts, tax collection as reflected in the Exchequer returns seems to be holding up. The most important taxes, Income Tax and VAT were marginally ahead of expectations. The apparent very strong performance of Corporation Tax to the end of April in percentage terms is not significant, relative to the expectations for the Corporation Tax yield over the entire year.

Income tax, which for Exchequer return purposes includes the Universal Social Charge figure, is some €160m ahead of Department of Finance forecasts. Given that one of the very few reliefs offered in Budget 2012 was in the area of Universal Social Charge (by raising the exemption threshold to €10,000), this is a strong performance. The vast bulk of this figure is of course attributable to collections under PAYE. Omitted from the face of the Exchequer returns is PRSI, as it is netted off against Department of Social Protection expenditure. If income tax is up, it may be expected that so too was the PRSI take, but that did not stop the Department having a significant overrun of expenditure.

There is no indication from the VAT figure that the increase in the top rate of VAT from 21% to 23% had a particularly negative effect on consumer spending. April is not however a major collection month for VAT purposes and a better indication of the VAT trend will come in next month's edition when figures for the March/April returns are in.

It will come as no surprise to Chartered Accountants that CGT and Stamp Duty continue to make very little overall contribution, dependent as they are on asset values and market activity. The best that can be said is that they could be worse.

In summary, tax receipts overall are some 3.5% ahead of forecasts, and approximately 12.5% ahead of the position last year. Much of the increase in 2012 over last year is attributable to the overhang from the tax increases first introduced in 2011.

The Exchequer returns are published on the Department of Finance website and the end-April returns can be accessed at http://www.finance.gov.ie/viewdoc.asp?DocID=-1&CatID=5&UserLang=EN&m=19