Aided by strong show on the corporate tax front, the Centre's net direct tax collections grew 20.45 per cent in April-January 2011 to Rs 3.18 lakh crore (Rs 2.64 lakh crore). At this collection level, the Centre has achieved 91.35 per cent of the revised target of Rs 3.47 lakh crore for the current fiscal.
In the first ten months of the current fiscal, corporate tax collections grew 24.71 per cent to Rs 2.17 lakh crore (Rs 1.74 lakh crore). Corporate tax collections in January 2011 stood at Rs 13,628 crore, reflecting a 86.79 per cent increase over Rs 7,296 crore collected in the same month last year.
Personal income-tax collections (including Securities transaction tax and residual fringe benefit tax/ banking cash transaction tax) grew 11.11 per cent to Rs 1 lakh crore (Rs 0.90 lakh crore). In January 2011, personal income-tax collections grew 23.51 per cent to Rs 7,896 crore (Rs 6,383 crore).
Direct tax collections are buoyant despite higher tax refunds, which increased 38.65 per cent to Rs 53,688 crore during April-January 2011 as against Rs 38,721 crore in the same period in the previous year.
The centralised processing centre of the Income-Tax Department at Bangalore has completed processing of all e-filed tax returns for the current assessment year 2010-11. As such all taxpayers who have filed e-returns and whose refund claim is below Rs 10 lakhs would be issued their income-tax refunds by March 2011, an official release said.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes Chairman has directed all the Chief Commissioners to upload necessary data so that the refunds can be issued expeditiously, the release added.