OTTAWA, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- The Canadian federal government ran up a deficit of 19-billion Canadian dollars (about 14.5 billion U.S. dollars) in 2017/18 fiscal year, the same as the one of the previous year, according to Canada's Finance Ministry Friday.
The deficit came in slightly lower than the 19.9 billion Canadian dollars projected in the federal budget released in February.
The figures for the 2017/18 fiscal year released by the ministry today also show the debt-to-GDP ratio has edged up.
The final federal 2017/18 debt-to-gross domestic product ratio is 31.3 percent, up from an initial estimate of 30.4 percent.
The ministry predicts the ratio will fall to 28.4 percent in the 2022/23 fiscal year.
Meanwhile, the figures demonstrate that Canadians paid an additional 9.9 billion Canadian dollars (about 7.5 billion U.S. dollars) in personal income taxes in 2017-18 and corporate tax added an additional 5.5 billion Canadian dollars (about 4.2 billion dollars), compared to the 2016-17 fiscal year, mainly due to a fast-growing economy.
Some 50 percent of the increase in personal income taxes was attributed to some high-income Canadians no longer claiming income in the previous tax years in the 29 percent tax bracket, rather than the new top 33 percent bracket.
Those increased revenues were a good surprise for the federal government, bringing in 4 billion Canadian dollars (about 3 billion U.S. dollars) higher than expected.
