Grim Exchequer Numbers ahead of Budget 2010: A €22bn deficit – now with additional €2.75bn missing

Dept of Finance have released the Exchequer figures for October and they are not pretty reading. Losing a further €2bn to year end on their April projections is quite something. Today’s figures are out and the deficit now stands at €22,738,473,000.
Tax revenue at €26bn is €6bn off last year and there are plenty of documents to accompany the figures.

We got a glimpse of it after 3.00 today when Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan told the Dail the finances are back to 2003 levels. Total revenues are set to finish at €32bn for the year – a terrible situation for a national budget to have shrunk that far.

In his budget speech in April the Minister expected to have €34.75bn coming in so the falloff of over €2.5bn in the space of 8 months will be enormously worrying ahead of a slash and burn budget.

He also said the Government will have to borrow €22bn this year to fund voted services.

He said the stabilisation of the finances must be a priority for 2010.

Asked by Labour’s Joan Burton why the Exchequer returns will fall €2bn short of his own predictions last April, the Minister said that due to wage reductions half of all income earners are now out of the tax net, an increase of 10%.

Other interesting notes by the Minister:

He also said the number paying tax at the top rate is down from 21% to 10%.

Mr Lenihan also said that unemployment figures for the end of October will show there was no increase in the Live Register and that he did not accept that unemployment would grow to 500,000.

The figures in the breakdown to the exchequer show just how badly hit the tax receipts are as many are now well behind target (apart from Corporation tax). As you can see from the table below.

The year on year changes are equally disturbing:

The idea that the national debate is dominated by pay-cuts should be considered in light of the fact that everything will be cut this December – services, staff, pay. The debate is raging between unions and government but it shouldn’t just get bogged down on pay the level of service provision and commitment to programme for those in need are under serious threat as well and the three deflationary budgets (no matter what they do) will only make things a lot worse before they get better.

Thanks to Ben in comments for breaking down the tax receipts into this nice chart: