Dec quarter advance tax mop-up in Mumbai rises 12%

It rises to Rs 24,279 crore from Rs 21,681 crore in the same period a year ago

Advance tax collection from top 45 companies in Mumbai has gone up both at quarterly level as well as in the first nine months of the current financial year, according to Income-Tax officials.

For the December quarter, it rose to Rs 24,279 crore from Rs 21,681 crore in the same period a year ago, showing a growth of 12 per cent, they said.

Similarly, collection by the Mumbai region, which nets one-third of the total tax for the government, during the first nine months of the current financial year shot up to Rs 61,327 crore from Rs 55,827 crore a year ago, up 10 per cent.

"Advance tax collections have been really good. We expect to meet the target, projected for the fiscal. There is no significant increase in our surveys," Principal Chief Commissioner of Income Tax and head of the Mumbai region, D S Saksena told PTI.

"The reason is surveys are dependent on intelligence- based reports, which couldn't happen this time at the required level", he said, adding however, "we are hopeful of increasing the number surveys during the remaining part of the year." Mostly, the advance tax collections came from private banks, led by HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank, as the state-owned lenders showed an overall negative growth for the reporting period. Tax collection from state-owned banks was not so encouraging basically because these lenders are faced with staggered NPAs.

While private sector banks registered a growth of 25 per cent on the front of advance tax collections, their foreign counterparts showed an expansion of 3 per cent and public sector banks are in the negative zone.

For the first nine months of FY16, HDFC Bank paid 27 per cent more advance tax than the year-ago period, while ICICI Bank paid 25 per cent more. HDFC paid 10.2 per cent more, while mid-size private sector lender Yes Bank showed its tax outgo rising 38 per cent.

Among PSU lenders, SBI paid 14 per cent, IDBI 5 per cent, Central Bank of India 6 per cent and Union Bank 4 per cent, and they are on the positive side.

But Bank of India (-17 per cent) and Bank of Baroda (-50 per cent) are on the declining side, he said.

Total tax collected from the Mumbai region during the first nine months stood at Rs 1.2 trillion, up from Rs 1.07 trillion a year ago, showing a growth of 12 per cent.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes, the governing body for the I-T Department, has set a tax collection target of Rs 2.56 trillion from the Mumbai region for FY16.