45% rise in I-T collection in Gujarat

Call it the rising income effect or a spurge in the efficiency of the taxman or perhaps the honesty syndrome catching up with the common tax payer, the income tax collections in Gujarat have risen by 45% for the period ending September 15, 2012 against the same period last year.

It should be noted that the collection for the corresponding period (till Sept 15, 2011) last year was Rs2,515 crore. In fact, the department has also registered a sharp rise in the corporate tax collection as well.

This year, the corporate tax collected up to September 15, 2012 was Rs4,215 crore compared to last years Rs3,483.40 crore — a rise of 21%. Both corporate tax and income tax form part of the advance tax collected during the year.

Overall the state has seen a 31.2% rise in tax collection during this period, compared to corresponding period last year.

The investigation wing of the department has collected Rs258 crore so far against the annual target of Rs1,166 crore while the international taxation segment has collected Rs24l crore against the Rs653 crore target.

It should be noted that the corporate tax target for the department this year is Rs15,924 crore while that for Income Tax and Wealth Tax is Rs10,541 crore and Rs 87 crore respectively.

Interestingly the overall advance tax collection across the country has also risen by 37% for the period to Rs1,76,035.60 crore from Rs1,27,857 crore.

Meanwhile, 5 Gujarat PSUs figure in the list of the top 10 corporate tax payers for the period. The highest tax payer among Gujarat PSUs is GMDC which paid Rs184.50 crore by way of corporate tax against Rs85 crore for the same period last year.

The other PSUs that figure in the list are GSPC, GSFC, Gujarat State Petornet, Gujarat Gas etc. Axis Bank leads the list of top private corporate tax payers. The banking major has paid Rs1,200 crore by way of tax against last year’s Rs1,000 crore.

Gujarat stands ninth among all states in overall tax collection for the period. India’s commercial capital Mumbai has taken the first place which has seen a 42% rise in tax collection, followed by Delhi that has seen a 71% rise in collection.

Manual filing of returns takes a dip
After Union government started the facility of filing I-T returns online, there has been a sharp decline in number of taxpayers submitting returns manually. I-T department officials said that for the period ended August 31, 2012, six lakh returns were filed manually. Earlier, around 33 lakh assessees used to file their returns manually.