New initiatives improve tax revenue: FM

Finance Minister P Chidambaram today said new legislative and administrative measures have brought fiscal stability, improved tax revenue and reduced expenditure.

Addressing the meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee attached to his ministry, Chidambaram said tax buoyancy was due to the good performance of the economy and the new initiatives taken by the Central Board of Direct Taxes and Central Board of Excise and Customs.

On direct taxes, Chidambaram said that the tax deducted at source administration, refund bankers, tax return preparers scheme, large tax payers unit, e-filing of taxes and business process re-engineering are some of the important initiatives that have lead to an unprecedented growth in tax collections.

With the attitude of people to pay taxes changing and the number of tax payers increasing, direct tax collections increased 44.9% between April and November this fiscal. While personal income tax collectios increased 42.5%, corporation tax colections moved up 46.6%, Chidambaram said.

Customs duty collections increased 17.4%, central excise by 7.6% and service tax by 36.3% between April and October in the current fiscal. Overall collection of indirect taxes increased 15% during this period.

The number of direct tax assesses increased from 30.17 million in 2003-04 to 31.92 million in 2006-07, and the number of assesses filing returns increased from 23.42 million to 27.54 million during this period. 

The number of permanent account numbers (PANs) was 57,474,806 as of October this year and around 8,00,000-9,00,000 PANs are being allotted every year, he said, adding that the de-duplication of PANs has been completed in more than 95% cases.