Income from indirect taxes fuels Turkey’s budget

Neşe Karanfil ANKARA

Turkey’s January budget had around 3.8 billion Turkish Liras ($1.5 billion) of surplus and 8.8 billion liras ($3.5 billion) of non-interest surplus in January.

Tax incomes rose to 34.8 billion liras by a 6.6 percent increase. It was seen that mainly the incomes from indirect taxes hiked dramatically in the mentioned period. In this vein, the incomes from added value taxes increased by 19.2 percent and from special consumption taxes by 16.7 percent.

There was also a dramatic rise in the special consumption tax on cigarettes. The incomes from this sort of tax on cigarettes surged to 3.3 billion liras in January 2015 by 37 percent of increase from the same month of the previous year. The incomes from special consumption taxes on alcoholic drinks rose to 682 million liras in January 2015 by a 51 percent of increase from the previous period. 

Budget incomes increased to 40.1 billion liras ($16.3 billion) in January 2015 by a 5.8 percent increase from the same month of the previous year, and expenses rose to 36.3 billion liras ($14.7 billion) with a slight increase, according to data released by the Finance Ministry.