Direct tax Collection for 2009-10 may fall short of target

The direct tax collection for 2009-10 is likely to be around Rs 3.80 lakh crore, missing the revised target by Rs 7,000 crore (Rs 70 billion). “The final figure will be available in mid-May when all the transactions are compiled. As on date it is somewhere around Rs 3.78 lakh crore…it may be Rs 3.80 lakh crore,” Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) chairman S S N Moorthy said at an Assocham seminar.

The government had set the target for direct tax collection at Rs 3.70 lakh crore in the budget for 2009-10, and later revised it upwards to Rs 3.87 lakh crore.

According to the provisional data, the actual collection of direct taxes, which mainly include corporate tax and personal income tax, was Rs 3.75 lakh crore.

However, minister of state for finance S S Palanimanickam  had informed Parliament that the provisional figure of Rs 3.75 lakh crore would be revised upwards once the final figures are received.

Speaking at a TDS seminar, Moorthy said that TDS component in direct tax collection is quite substantial. It stood at Rs 1.53 lakh crore in the last fiscal, about 40 per cent of the total direct tax collection.

The government during 2010-11 proposes to mop up Rs 4.30 lakh crore through direct tax. Of the total Rs 1.28 lakh crore is expected from income tax, Rs 3.01 lakh crore from corporate tax and Rs 603 crore (Rs 6.03 billion) from wealth tax.

To enable faster refunds to tax payers, the IT department plans to open centralised processing centre in Faridabad and Ahmedabad. At present it has only one processing centre in Bangalore. “We are still at the thinking stage but it is likely to be in Ahmedabad and Faridabad,” Moorthy said.