New Delhi: The Centre’s tax collection target for the next fiscal is correct as the revenue department has made a realistic assessment of growth in both tax and non-tax revenue collections, said India’s top revenue officer Ajay Bhushan Pandey in an exclusive interaction with ETV Bharat.
“We have made a realistic estimate of our revenue. We have done a thorough analysis of how much we are going to collect,” said finance secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey.
“My estimate is that my collection is going to be approximately the same it used to be last year,” Pandey told ETV Bharat in a post-budget interaction.
Pandey said the revenue target was calculated on the basis of projected GDP growth in the next fiscal which has been estimated to grow at 14.5% in nominal terms.
The top officer said the growth in tax collection will be in line with GDP growth rate with some additional receipts due to increased compliance and efficient tax collection.
Citing the calculations done by tax officials, Ajay Bhushan Pandey said, the growth in tax collection rate will be 1.17 times than that of nominal GDP growth rate which has been pegged at 14.5%.
“The growth in tax collection should be in the range of 16.7% over the current year’s tax collection,” he said.
The finance secretary, who also holds the revenue portfolio, says in addition to tax revenue, the Centre will be able to garner revenue from other sources, including disinvestment proceeds that have been estimated at Rs 1.75 lakh crore.
A projected growth of nearly 17% comes in the backdrop of a steep fall in the revenue collection this year, which declined from a budget estimate of Rs 24.23 lakh crore to just Rs 19 lakh crore as per the revised estimate. A sharp decline of over 21% or Rs 5.23 lakh.
Covid dents tax collection target
All three biggest sources of tax revenue for the Centre, Corporation Tax, Income Tax and GST registered a sharp decline. While Corporation Tax collection is expected to decline from the budget estimate of Rs 6.81 lakh crore to just Rs 4.46 lakh crore, Income Tax collection will decline from the budget estimate of Rs 6.38 lakh crore to just Rs 4.59 lakh crore. Similarly, GST collection declined from the budget estimate of Rs 6.9 lakh crore to Rs 5.15 lakh crore.
In her budget projections for the next fiscal, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman estimated that the corporation tax collection will improve to Rs 5.47 lakh crore, income tax receipts will improve to Rs 5.61 lakh crore and GST receipts will increase to Rs 6.3 lakh crore, taking the gross revenue collection to Rs 22.17 lakh crore.
Also read: GST collection touches a record Rs 1.20 lakh crore in January
