Net direct tax collections grew at 19 per cent to touch Rs 3,12,800 crore till March 18 this year because of better performance of banking, information technology and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sectors.
Advance tax payments, which is seen as a proxy for performance of companies, grew at 17.5 per cent to Rs 1,23,400 crore, against Rs 1,05,100 crore till March 18 of FY09. The total corporate tax collections are estimated at around Rs 2,00,000 crore, with personal income tax (PIT) receipts accounting for Rs 1,12,000 crore.
Compared with last year’s collection of around Rs 1,05,000 crore, PIT grew at 5 per cent, said a finance ministry official. The comparative figure for last year’s corporate tax collection was not available.
With Rs 32,200 crore short of the revised budget estimate target of Rs 3,45,000 crore, the revenue department is hoping to collect the remaining amount through a variety of channels, including tax recoveries.
One such category would be people who had paid tax last year but have not filed tax returns this year. Last fiscal, the department collected around Rs 4,000 crore on this head.
Another source is deductors who had not deposited tax deducted at source (TDS) into the government account. In 2007-08, the Income Tax Department found around 1,000 such deductors who owed Rs 1,600 crore to the department.
“This year too we hope to collect around the same amount as liquidity crunch provide an incentive to hold back further,” said a revenue department official.
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Non corporate, who don’t pay taxes through e-payment, is also expected to fill some of the gap.
For the first 11 months of the current fiscal, net direct tax collections stood at Rs 2,58,902 crore, registering a growth of 11.27 per cent. This meant that a gap of around Rs 86,000 crore needs to filled to achieve the revised budget estimate. In the first 18 days of March, the last month of current fiscal, the department has managed to collect Rs 53,898 crore or 62 per cent of the gap.