As corporate bigwigs falter in tax payment in the third quarter, income tax sleuths here have decided to go after the arrears and conduct fresh surveys on erring companies to achieve their target.
“Overall tax collection so far is better than last year. But some corporates have not done well. So we are banking on recovering arrears worth Rs12,000 crore in the final quarter.
“We are also trying to increase the number of surveys to achieve the target of Rs2.56 trillion”, principal chief commissioner of income tax and head of Mumbai region DS Saxena told the news agency on Thursday.
The CBDT has set a target of Rs2.56 trillion for Mumbai region, the largest tax region which contributes over a third of the total tax revenue. The annual target for direct taxes is Rs7.98 trillion for the current fiscal, up 16 per cent over the past fiscal.
According to the taxmen, many corporates have faltered in tax payment in the third quarter though overall collections have been satisfactory.
Net tax collected by the Mumbai region as of December 22 stood at Rs1,59,372 crore, up 14.6 per cent from Rs1,38,956 crore in the same period last year. Out of this, corporation tax stood at Rs1,08,209 crore, up 18.4 per cent from Rs91,363 crore a year ago.
Still, corporation tax collection during the third quarter has been a worry as only a week is left for them to pay up. Tax collections from steel and cement companies have fallen drastically in the third quarter.
Steel majors Tata Steel and Jindal Steel entered negative zone on the tax payment this year. While for the first nine months Tata Steel’s payout is lower by 16 per cent, in the case of Jindal Steel it is down 81 per cent.
Similarly, engineering major l&T and cement major Ambuja also paid less tax in the first three quarters than year-ago.
While payout by l&T was down 15 per cent at Rs580 crore from Rs680 crore a year ago, in case of Ambuja Cements it was down 16 per cent at Rs226 crore.
However, IT majors TCS and Tech Mahindra paid higher tax and same was the case with Tata Chemicals which reported 6 per cent more outgo at Rs175 crore, despite a 15 per cent drop in its third quarter payout at Rs71 crore.