Hundreds of thousands of private bank accounts “disappear” since duty introduction

Budapest, January 6 (MTI) – More than 340,000 personal bank accounts “have disappeared” in Hungary since a tax on banking transactions was introduced two years ago, business daily Vilaggazdasag said on Tuesday, quoting data by the National Bank of Hungary.

By the end of September last year the number of individual bank accounts was just a little over 9.4 million, a record low figure in four years, the paper said.

The new levy added 260 billion forints (EUR 818m) to state coffers in 2013. The state last year calculated 269,4 billion forints in revenues from the tax of which 254 billion forints were collected by the end of November, the paper said.

The target this year is 262,2 billion forints — an average 25,000 forints per account, the paper said.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters