Income tax mop-up from Mumbai rises 20% to Rs 1.14 tln

Income tax collection from the Mumbai region has gone up by over 20 per cent as of November 21 over the year-ago period.
The region, which mops up more than one-third of the total direct tax, has collected Rs 1.14 trillion (Rs 1,14,000 crore) as of November 21, up from Rs 0.95 trillion in the year-ago period, showing a growth by 20.17 per cent, Principal Chief Commissioner of Income Tax and Head of Mumbai region DS Saksena told PTI.
The department is hopeful of achieving its projected collection of Rs 2.56 trillion for the fiscal by March from Mumbai region alone, he added.

Against this, indirect taxes have been doing much better with the collection till September rising over 35.8 per cent to over Rs 3.24 trillion in the first half of the current fiscal, reflecting growth in economic activity against Rs 2.38 trillion.
Saksena said while advance tax collection from the region rose only 6.47 per cent to Rs 58,000 crore during period, up from Rs 54,761 crore a year ago, TDS collections rose 10 per cent to Rs 53,062 crore from Rs 48,223 crore.
Saksena attributed the rise in collections to the uptick in the performance of industries and "given the trend so far, we are quite hopeful of achieving the target of Rs 2.56 trillion."

For the entire country, which comprises 17 regions, income tax collections as on November 21 stood at Rs 3.63 trillion against a budget estimate of Rs 7.97 trillion for the full year.

Nationally advance tax mop up rose to Rs 1.42 trillion from Rs 1.34 trillion in the year-ago period and thus showing a growth of 6.5 per cent.
Similarly, TDS amounting to Rs 1.95 trillion was collected from the entire country during the period, showing a growth by 11.33 per cent over the year-ago period's collections at Rs 1.75 trillion.
The growth rate in collection during the first half of 2015-16 is double the budget requirement of 18.8 per cent for the full fiscal.

Bulk of the growth in the indirect taxes has been contributed by excise duty collection, which grew 69.6 per cent during the period. Excise collection during April-September over Rs 1.25 trillion, as against Rs 74,019 crore in the same period last fiscal, while Customs mop up grew 17.5 per cent to over Rs 1.03 trillion during the six months and service tax grew 24.3 per cent to Rs 95,493 crore.
Similarly, engineering major L&T and cement major Ambuja
also paid less tax in the first three quarters than year-ago.
While payout by L&T was down 15 per cent at Rs 580 crore from Rs 680 crore a year ago, in case of Ambuja Cements it was down 16 per cent at Rs 226 crore.

However, IT majors TCS and Tech Mahindra paid higher tax and same was the case with Tata Chemicals which reported 6 per cent more outgo at Rs 175 crore, despite a 15 per cent drop in its third quarter payout at Rs 71 crore.
FMCG companies too have paid more tax this year. Industry major HUL paid 6 per cent more tax in the third quarter at Rs 620 crore against Rs 600 crore.
Johnson & Johnson paid Rs 252 crore for the nine-month period, up 90 per cent from Rs 132 crore. For third quarter alone, it has coughed out Rs 92 crore against Rs 35 crore in the year-ago period.

Pharma companies have also done well during the first nine months with companies like Aristo paying 80 per cent more, Cipla 5 per cent more while Lupin was almost flat with 1 per cent increase.