Tax collection up 15 per cent

The corporate and income tax collection from the state of West Bengal and Andaman and Nicobar Island have recorded 15.63 per cent growth so far in this fiscal over the corresponding period last fiscal.

Corporate tax collection has increased by 20.49 per cent.

The department is hopeful of ending the year with 30 per cent growth.

"Business environment has been good so far. By end of December we will get a fair idea of what would be the expected collections," N P Sengupta, chief commissioner of income tax (Kolkata-1) said on Friday.

However, the income tax growth, 10.29 per cent, has not matched with that of corporation tax this year.

Till November 15 of 2004-5, tax collection is to the tune of Rs 2,438.76 crore as compared to last year of Rs 2,109.11 crore. Corporate tax collection is Rs 1,360.82 crore over Rs 1,131.72 crore while income tax collection Rs 1,077.94 crore as compared to 977.39 crore last year.

The targets for corporate tax and income tax are Rs 3,801 crore and Rs 2,501 crore respectively.

However, there are concerns whether the target for corporate tax could be met.

The department is confident about meeting the target though. The collection of cor3poration tax could be short by Rs 500 crore. In contrast, income tax collection fell short by just over Rs 500 crore while corporation tax exceeded the target by Rs 119 crore in the last fiscal.

Income tax collection fell short because there were number of VRS cases in previous year (2002-3) and a large chunk came.

Accordingly, the income tax collection figure went up and the target for last fiscal revised sharply upward. Likewise, the target for corporate tax has been revised this year.

However, compared to the overall scenario in the country, the growth is not much encouraging. Other states have recorded far robust growth on the back of good industrial growth.

IT text

Thirteenth edition of the 'How to Handle Income Tax Problem', authored by Narayan Jain and Dilip Loyalka was released by N P Sengupta, chief commissioner of income tax (Kolkata-1) in the presence of justice Chittotosh Mukherjee on Friday.