Direct tax mop-up grows 27%

Corporates pay 64% more advance tax in 3rd instalment

There has been a 64 per cent rise in the third instalment of advance tax paid by Corporate India till December 17, over the same period last fiscal.

As a result flash figures of direct tax realised by the Centre, shows aggregate corporate tax collections for the April-December 17 period have increased 40 per cent compared with the same period of last year. This is Rs 9,341 crore more than that of 2002-03.

In the same period, income tax collection has also risen by 13.8 per cent recording a rise of Rs 2,993 crore, and a Rs 12,334 crore rise in direct tax collections over that of 2002-03.

The percentage growth in direct tax collections over last year works out to Rs 27.4 per cent, which is much more than the budgeted rise of 17.61 per cent.

Net direct tax collection for the year has therefore gone up to Rs 57,285 crore. Of this, Rs 32,579 crore is from corporate tax and Rs 24,706 crore is from income tax. Corporates pay 75 per cent of their tax liability for the year by December 15.

Based on the healthy inflow, the total net direct tax collection of the Centre, is therefore almost 60 per cent of the Budget target of Rs 95,569 crore for 2003-04, compared to 49.3 per cent last year.

In the case of corporate tax the income tax department has realised 63.3 per cent of the target, while in the case of income tax it is 56.1 per cent. The department is hopeful that with a little over four months of the fiscal year remaining, it will be able to surpass the Budget estimate for the first time in many years.

The third instalment of advance tax shows that companies have paid Rs 10,627 crore in the first 17 days of December, compared with only Rs 6,481 crore paid in last December.