DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland collected even more corporate tax by the end of November than expected when it flagged an anticipated one-off boost, pushing the state's tax take by 2.4 percent, or 1.2 billion euros (1.07 billion pounds), ahead of target for 2018.
Ireland's finance minister said in October that quirks associated with the country's large cluster of multinational firms would inflate corporate tax receipts by as much as 1 billion euros for 2018.
However receipts were running 1.5 billion euros or almost 20 percent above profile at the end of November, the largest corporation tax collection month of the year, data from the finance ministry showed.
If another 600 million euros is collected as forecast in December, Ireland's annual corporate tax take will top 10 billion euros for the first time, having stood at just under 4 billion euros in 2012.
The finance ministry said in October that technical changes in global accounting rules regarding the allocation and timing of corporate tax receipts would mainly be responsible for the one-off increase, although it added on Tuesday that the increase partly reflected higher levels of profitability in the economy.
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Gareth Jones)
