| About 40 per cent of Indian companies pay an effective tax of only 10 per cent or less, while only 8 per cent pay the highest tax rate of over 36.59 per cent, according to the Budget. |
| This information was culled out from a list of 1,689 companies taken from the list of about 9,000 companies in the database of Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE), representing various sectors. |
| Further, 534 companies comprising 8.8 per cent of the total income contributed 30.77 per cent of the total taxes. "Therefore, the tax liability across companies is unevenly distributed. This is primarily due to the various tax preferences in the statute," the Budget points out. |
| At the same time, just 39 Indian companies, making profit over Rs 500 crore, account for 60 per cent of the total corporate tax collection in the country. These 39 companies, however, account for 73.5 per cent of the total profits the 1,689 companies make in a year, according to Union Budget 2006-07. |
| According to the Budget documents, this would mean that these companies are paying an effective tax at the rate of 15.99 per cent "" substantially lower than the effective tax rate of 19.37 per cent and the statutory tax rate of 35.875 per cent. |
| On the other hand, 593 companies with profits less than or equal to zero contributed 9.23 per cent of the total taxes. |
| At the same time, 65 companies with profits between Rs 100 crore and Rs 500 crore "" accounting for 14.87 per cent of the profits "" contributed 16.79 per cent of the total tax collected. These companies pay tax at an effective rate of 21.86 per cent. |
| "These companies reported Rs 1,02,325 crore as profits before taxes ""excluding losses reported by companies "" but declared a total income of Rs 50,735 crore only," the Budget points out. |
| These companies paid Rs. 19,816 crore as corporate tax during the financial year 2003-04 "" accounting for 30.14 percent of voluntary tax payment of Rs 65,753 crore during the year. |
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