Direct Tax Share Hits Decade Low

CBDT makes income tax data for 16 years public; It’s a big step for transparency, tweets Prime Minister Narendra Modi

NEW DELHI: The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has made public a host of hard data on the total number of taxpayers in the country, income disclosed in IT returns by various category of taxpayers and number of PAN holders in the country for a chosen period of time.

“It’s a big step for transparency,” tweeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the government released a solid amount of data on income tax for 16 years, including the earnings disclosed by different categories of people.

The department said the objective of publishing these statistics was to encourage “wider use and analysis of income tax data by departmental personnel and academicians.”

Corporate tax collections have risen nearly 12-fold in the last 15 years and personal income tax by 9-fold but share of direct taxes in the economy has fallen to almost a decade low of 5.47 per cent, according to the data.

There was not much differenl between corporate tax collections and personal income tax collections in 2000-01.

While corporate tax collections that year stood at Rs 35,696 crore, personal income tax collections were Rs 31,764 crore.

In 15 years, corporate tax collections have risen 12-fold to Rs 4,54,419 crore in 2015-16 and is more than 58 per cent higher than Rs 2,86,801 crore income tax collections.

After including other direct taxes, total direct tax collections were Rs 68,305 crore in 2000-01, which have risen to Rs 7,42,295 crore in 2015-16.

Maharashtra contributes the biggest share of direct taxes at Rs 2.77 lakh crore in 2014-15 when total collections were Rs 6.96 lakh crore. Delhi was second biggest contributor at Rs 91,247.90 crore while Karnataka was third at Rs 60,595.22 crore.

Modi's home state Gujarat gave Rs 35,912.46 crore of taxes, behind Tamil Nadu's Rs 44,732.62 crore.

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