Indirect tax kitty grows 4.7% in April-June

Indirect tax mop-up grew at a slower pace of 4.7% in the April-June quarter of current fiscal, mainly on account of decline in excise duty collection, reflecting slump in manufacturing activity.

Indirect tax -- excise, customs and service tax collection — in the first quarter stood at about Rs 1.11 lakh crore, as against Rs 1.05 lakh crore in the corresponding period a year ago, a finance ministry official said.

The indirect tax collection growth at 4.7% in the first quarter is much less than 19% increase envisaged in the Budget for the full 2013-14 fiscal.

Excise collection dropped 4.9% during the quarter to over Rs 37,600 crore, a sign that manufacturing output is slowing.

Growth in industrial production has slowed to 0.1% in the first two months of the fiscal beginning April, as against 0.6% in the year ago period.

Customs mop-up was up just 6.9% to over Rs 40,800 crore during the quarter under review.

Service tax collection, which has become a new focus area for revenue officials, grew by 15.2% to Rs 32,500 crore during the period.

With an aim to widen the service tax net, the government during the last fiscal introduced the concept of negative list of taxation. As per it, all services except those in the negative list, are taxable.

The Revenue Department is targeting 12 lakh non-filers and stop-filers of service tax to meet the annual target of Rs 1.81 lakh crore collection from this segment during this fiscal.