Tax revenue in the nation's general account fell 3.2 percent in November compared with a year earlier to 7.454 trillion yen, the Finance Ministry said Monday.
But the year-on-year decrease was much smaller than the figure for October, which shrank 14 percent compared with the same month in 1997.
The relative improvement partly reflects the fading impact of a temporary income tax cut made in August last year, a ministry official said. National revenue from income tax fell 10 percent from a year earlier to 1.439 trillion yen. Of that, revenue from income tax withheld dropped 18.1 percent to 836.6 billion yen. In October, revenue from income tax withheld had plunged 28.7 percent.
The impact of the temporary tax cut, the second of its kind in 1998, showed up less in November than in October for tax withheld, the official said. Corporate tax revenue shrank 8.9 percent to 3.412 trillion yen because of lower income at companies that filed interim earnings reports.
Revenue from the consumption tax increased 24 percent to 1.693 trillion yen, with the impact of the April 1997 rate hike from 3 percent to 5 percent still being felt, the official said.
The tax revenue accumulated in fiscal 1998, which began last April, came to 25.358 trillion yen, 8.7 percent lower than the previous year. It accounted for 50.5 percent of the revised estimate for the whole fiscal year.