Coronavirus crisis hits I-T collections
Overall tax receipts dips -4.4 per cent nationwide
Amid the coronavirus gloom, the income-tax department is racing against time to achieve its targets even as the economic slowdown has impacted income-tax collections across the country. As the financial year comes to an end in 10 days from now, the figures so far present a grim picture of the economy.
Post March 15, the cutoff date for payment of advance tax, the allIndia tax collection stands at a little over
`9.70 lakh crore while the figure for the same period during the last financial year (2018-19) was over `10.14 lakh crore. The overall growth rate is down at 4.4 per cent.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has set an all- India target of
`13.8 lakh crore for the I-T department for the financial year 2019-20, of which `7,60,000 crore was to be corporate tax and `6,07,200 crore, personal income tax. The target for 2018-19 was
`11.5 lakh crore. According to figures available with Deccan Chronicle (up to March
18 for the financial year
2019-20), Mumbai I-T region collected total corporate tax (CT) of
`1.79 lakh crore and income-tax (I-T) of `1.08 lakh crore. The total net collection stood at `2.98 lakh crore while the figure during the same period (up to March 18)
in 2018-19 was `3.15 lakh crore. The growth was put at minus-5.2 per cent. Similarly, in Delhi, the net collection was over `1.41 lakh crore while in the last financial year it was over
`1.53 lakh crore. The growth rate is minus-8 per cent.
Coming to the southern states, Chennai collected `68,324 crore as against `69,248 crore last year (growth rate at
minus-1.3 per cent); Hyderabad I-T region collected `54,096 crore, as against `53,320 crore last year, recording a growth rate of 1.5 per cent. Bengaluru fared
poorly with total net collections standing at over
`1.05 lakh crore as against `1.10 lakh crore the previous year, recording a growth of
minus-5 per cent. “The economic slowdown has had a huge impact on tax collections throughout last year. The overall tax collections are very poor. There are still 10 more days to go. We are keeping our fingers crossed,” I-T officials said.
They also said that the target for each financial year that is set by the CBDT is unrealistic.
However, in order to get closer to the target of
`13.8 lakh crore, all efforts are being made to collect taxes under the ‘Vivad se Vishwas’ scheme, which allows taxpayers to settle their disputes in various judicial fora by paying the tax amount without interest or penalties by March 31.
Sources said that besides the economic slowdown, the soft approach of the incometax department towards corporations since July
31 (when Cafe Coffee Day founder V.G . Siddhartha’s suicide was rumoured to be due to “tax terrorism”) is what appears to have impacted the tax collection.