State tax revenue for the current fiscal year is likely to fall short of the initial estimate by more than 1 trillion yen, a Finance Ministry official said Monday.
It would be the third consecutive year of downward revision in the government's tax revenue estimate, the official said in a news conference about monthly tax revenue figures.
The likely shortfall this year is attributed to two factors in fiscal 1998, which ended in March: a 733 billion yen shortfall in tax revenue and an estimated 400 billion yen that must be refunded to corporate taxpayers. Corporate earnings also continued to drop.
As a result, this year's tax revenue is expected to fall at least 1.1 trillion yen, the official said. "It looks like we will have to pay unpaid bills that accumulated last year."
Speaking at a news conference later in the day, Vice Finance Minister Nobuaki Usui said that the expected shortfall in state tax revenues may require the issuance of government bonds to cover the gap.
The additional expenditure, if necessary, will be included in a supplementary budget to be submitted to the Diet later this month, he said.
But the expected shortfall in tax revenues will not directly correspond to a certain amount of bond issuance because some of the budgeted expenditures may go unspent and thus help reduce the overall state deficit, he said.