Net direct tax collections have registered a marginal 3.27 per cent increase during the first four months (April-July) of the current financial year on the back of higher tax refunds.
For the April-July period, direct tax collection stood at Rs 73,990 crore, up from Rs 71,648 crore in the same period last fiscal, according to a finance ministry release.
However, the income tax department’s total tax refund outgo for this period increased by 53.36 per cent at Rs 20,768 crore, compared with Rs 13,542 in the corresponding period last year.
Net collections are gross receipts less refunds. The high refunds are due to revenue department’s initiatives of faster processing of returns on the new national computer network. The system, which is available from the current fiscal, has the ability to process up to 200,000 returns every day. There are about 33 million taxpayers in India.
Likewise, there was 2.61 per cent growth in corporate taxes at Rs 42,685 crore, against Rs 41,598 crore in the same period last year. Personal income tax, which includes the fringe benefit tax, securities transaction tax and residual banking cash transaction tax, grew 4.33 per cent to Rs 31,279 crore, against Rs 29,982 crore last fiscal.
On a monthly basis, net tax collections increased marginally by 1.75 per cent for the month of July 2009 at Rs 14,525 crore, compared with Rs 14,275 crore in the year-ago month.
