More feel good on tax collections

‘‘Notwithstanding the benefits given to industry, we have achieved higher collection in taxes,’’ Finance Secretary D.C. Gupta told reporters. The Ministry made it an event to celebrate as revenue collection crossed the budget targets after a gap of four years. The Centre had earlier collected more revenue than it targeted in 1994-95, 1995-96 and 1999-2000. This is also for the first time in recent years that the Centre is slated to attain the estimated figure, which has been revised upwards.

The overall revenue collection of Rs 2,52,900 crore, is expected to be breached, as the government expects Rs 1,000 crore from tax deducted at source (TDS) and another Rs 500 crore from indirect taxes in the coming days, revenue secretary Vineeta Rai said.

Income tax mop up was higher by 13.6 per cent at Rs 40,703 crore, which was lower than the budget estimate of Rs 44,070 crore but higher than the revised estimate of Rs 40,269 crore during the last fiscal. The higher growth in direct tax was despite the refunds at Rs 24,888 crore last fiscal to 51.43 lakh assessees.

The number of tax payers also went up to 3.40 crore last fiscal from 3.31 crore in the previous fiscal mainly due to a slew of measures, including issue of pan cards and improvement in compliance.

Rai said indirect tax collections were at Rs 1,47,484 crore, which is lower than both the budget estimate of Rs 1,53,746 crore and revised estimate of Rs 1,49,500 crore.