Question 82

Does the Mid-Year Review of the budget present updated individual sources of revenue for the budget year underway?
 * a. Yes, the Mid-Year Review presents individual sources of revenue accounting for all revenue.
 * b. Yes, the Mid-Year Review presents individual sources of revenue accounting for at least two-thirds of, but not all, revenue.
 * c. Yes, the Mid-Year Review presents individual sources of revenue accounting for less than two-thirds of all revenues.
 * d. No, the Mid-Year Review does not present individual sources of revenue.
 * e. Not applicable/other (please comment).

OBS Guidelines
Question 82 asks whether revenue estimates for individual sources of revenue for the budget year underway are presented in the Mid-Year Review. Please note that year-to-date revenues as assessed in Question 73 do not qualify as updated estimates of revenue for the purposes of this indicator.

To answer “a,” the Mid-Year Review must present all sources of revenue individually, accounting for all revenues, and “other” or “miscellaneous” revenue must account for three percent or less of all revenue. To answer “b,” the Mid-Year Review must present individual sources of revenue that when combined account for at least two-thirds of all revenue, but not all revenue. A “c” answer applies if the Mid-Year Review presents estimates of individual revenue sources that account for less than two-thirds of revenue. Answer “d” applies if individual sources of revenue are not presented in the Mid-Year Review.

1) "Other" categories
Watch out for aggregate categories, such as “other.” To receive an “a” answer, the “other” category has to be smaller than 3% of the total. If the “other” category is more than 3%, then the score should be “b.”

A basic rule of thumb, beyond adding up anything called "other", is to look at items that are listed in the plural tense (i.e. taxes, fees, duties, charges, etc.) as that usually denotes the sum of different items.

2) How should we define individual sources of revenue?
As a general rule of thumb, please follow the categories laid out in the IMF’s Government Financial Statistics Manual 2014, page 88 in the document, page 112 in the PDF.

To qualify as an individual source of revenue and not simply a category, the tax listed should be at the 4th level (e.g., “Individual income tax” and not simply “Income tax”).

For social contributions, the revenue source listed should be at the 2nd level (e.g., “Social contributions” would qualify as an individual source of revenue)

For grants, the revenue source listed can be at the 2nd level (“Grants”). For a classification under “Other revenue”, the revenue source listed should be at least 3rd level (e.g., “Property income”, “Sales of goods and services”, “Fines, penalties, and forfeits” all qualify as individual sources of revenue).

3) Should we only accept updated, revised figures (as opposed to budgeted or six-month implementation figures)?
Just six-month implementation figures are not acceptable. To accept full-year figures that are the same as the original enacted figures, there has to be some indication that the country is affirming that the original enacted figures are remaining the same for the rest of the budget year (this could be as simple as the title of the column heading). For example, if the column heading is “Approved 2019 Budget,” we would not accept this information.