The capital's leadership usually talks about a loss of at least twenty billion due to the government's halving for SMEs. Despite this, more Ipa may flow into Budapest's coffers this year than in the peak year of 2019 before Covid, wrote Világgazdaság, which was reported by Magyar Hírlap.
In 2022, Budapest's local business tax revenue (ipa) may be in the range of HUF 167.5-170.4 billion. The lower threshold was calculated by the Budapest municipality itself when planning this year's budget, and the upper threshold was an estimate based on the national forecast. Whichever one the actual data will be closer to, one thing seems certain:
This year, the ipa income of the capital will set a record and will exceed the similar indicator of the peak year of 2019, even before the covid crisis, by several billion forints. At that time, not quite 164 billion was received under this title.
In other words, the loss caused by the pandemic will be completely recovered within three years.
The actual data for 2021 was already close to reaching the 2019 base, the HUF 157.7 billion volume represents a ratio of nearly 96.2 percent. By the way, the amount significantly exceeded the capital's original forecast: at the town hall, 139.3 billion IPA funds were indicated for 2021, which is an under-planning of HUF 18.4 billion.
Budapest's favorable IPA trajectory may be surprising because the city administration sees a hole of at least 20 billion in relation to the fact that the government decreed the release of half of the IPA back in December 2020.
Partly based on this, they launched an information campaign at the beginning of 2021 called "Protect Budapest". It stated that the cabinet's decision does not mean substantial help to businesses, but is a serious loss from the point of view of the municipality.
The halving of the business tax obligation means a loss of about HUF 20 billion, and if we add that the companies have a much worse business year than a year before, roughly HUF 35 billion less revenue can be received from business tax than expected, they said. Time proved the exact opposite scenario.
Photo: MH/Tamás Purger
