New Delhi: For the first time in five years, the government is likely to meet Rs 14.49-lakh crore budgetary tax collection target for 2015-16 with robust indirect tax mop up making up for the shortfall in direct levies.
“We are likely to exceed the collection in indirect tax by about Rs 40,000 crore in the current year. On the whole, we are very optimistic about achieving annual tax revenue target for the year,” Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said today. The government invariably falls short of tax collection target and had last time exceeded the budgeted target in 2011 fiscal.
Of the Rs 14.49 lakh crore tax revenue target set for 2015-16, Rs 7.97 lakh crore was estimated to come from direct taxes (corporate and income tax) and another Rs 6.47 lakh crore from indirect taxes (customs, excise and service tax). In the 10 months of the current fiscal, indirect tax mop up of Rs 5.44 lakh crore was 88 per cent of the full year target. Besides, direct tax collection of Rs 5.22 lakh crore was 65 per cent of target for 2015-16.
“Looking at the trend, it appears that as far as indirect tax collections are concerned, the government may get more than Rs 40,000 crore over and above the BE (budget estimate) target for indirect taxes for 2015-16 while there might be an equal amount of shortfall in direct tax collections.
“However, both direct and indirect tax collections put together, we expect to meet the annual BE target of Revenue collections for the current year without any shortfall,” Adhia said in a statement.
