Economists said this had increased the chances of Brown meeting his fiscal forecasts before the budget next month and reduced the threat of a breach of his "golden rule" - that he only borrows to invest over the economic cycle.
Brown, under fire from critics who say the public finances are out of control and that taxes will have to rise after the election, quickly trumpeted the figures as a vindication of his forecasts.
"Today's figures show that Britain, as I promised, is meeting our fiscal rules," the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in Staffordshire, central England.
Brown's room on the golden rule is likely to be boosted further by an ONS review of the way in which it classifies road repair and maintenance expenditure which has concluded that some spending now recorded as current expenditure should instead be marked as capital investment.
The ONS said it would publish more details on February 28 and make the revision in next month's public finances release.
Analysts said some kind of fiscal retrenchment may still be needed after the election to make sure the public finances remain on track.
"A surge in income tax and corporation tax revenues in January has somewhat improved the Chancellor's chances of hitting the golden rule in the current economic cycle," said John Hawksworth, economist at Pricewaterhouse-Coopers.
The government's preferred accruals-based measure of the public finances also posted a large surplus - the highest in three years. There was a public sector net surplus of 6.59 billion pounds, about 3 billion pounds higher on the year.
That took borrowing in the fiscal year to January to 30.88 billion pounds, on course to meet Brown's full-year forecast of 34.2 billion pounds.
Much of the improvement was down to a huge rise in receipts from companies, probably as oil companies have recorded record profits following the surge in energy prices last year.
For instance, Royal Dutch/Shell Group posted a British corporate profit record of more than 17 billion pounds.
Government company tax receipts were up 17.4 percent on the year in the April-January period, compared with Brown's forecast for the financial year as a whole of an increase of 15.4 percent. Income tax also rose 17.1 percent on a year earlier.