Corporate tax receipts surged 25% in key payment month of June

Reuters

Corporate tax receipts surged by 25 per cent year-on-year in June, a key month when around one-fifth of the year's company returns is usually paid, pushing the overall tax take for the first half of 2025 up 6.7 per cent year-on-year on an underlying basis.

The State has collected record levels of tax each year since 2021, mainly due to huge increases in corporate receipts that the Department of Finance had expected to fall a touch this year – excluding one-off Apple's back taxes – before returning to 2024 levels next year.

Corporate tax receipts fell 30 per cent year-on-year in May, one of the first major payment months of the year.

The Department of Finance put that down to one-off factors, and the renewed growth in June left corporate returns 7.4 per cent higher in the year to date, official data showed on Thursday.

Most large companies pay the bulk of their corporate tax in two payments, one in June and a larger amount in November.

The Republic's huge reliance on the tax paid by a cluster of US technology and pharmaceutical firms has made it especially vulnerable to the tariff and tax plans of US president Donald Trump, who has repeatedly singled out Ireland for "luring away" companies with decades of low corporate tax rates.

The €7.4 billion received last month – which was more than Ireland collected in all of 2017 – suggested the exchequer could be in line for another big increase in November.

The corporate tax haul, underpinned mainly by a small number of foreign multinationals, has handed Ireland the healthiest public finances in Europe and allowed it to boost government spending so far in 2025 by 8.2 per cent, 0.7 percentage points more than budgeted for.

Growth of 4.3 per cent in income tax receipts and 5.8 per cent in VAT by the end of June – the other two main tax categories – helped bring the underlying exchequer surplus to €1.2 billion in June.

The Department of Finance expects to end the year with a total budget surplus of 2.6 per cent of national income.