By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, FEB 10, 2016: The latest tax revenue numbers up to 31 st January, 2016 indicate healthy growth of 33.7% in Indirect Tax and 10.9% in Direct Tax collections. As against the Annual BE target for tax collections of Rs.14.49 lakh crore, the Government has received Rs.10.66 lakh crore, which is, 73.5% of the BE target. Looking to the trend, it appears that as far as Indirect Tax collections are concerned, the Government may get more than Rs.40,000 crore extra over and above the BE target for Indirect Taxes for 2015-16 while there might be an equal amount of shortfall in Direct Tax collections. However, both Direct and Indirect Tax collections put together, we expect to meet the annual BE target of Revenue collections for the current year without any shortfall.

Growth in Custom Duty revenue collections - on electrical machinery is 34.4%, in case of other machineries it is 27.8%. These are indicators of new investment taking place in private sector. As far as the growth in Services tax collections are concerned, as against 27.2% average growth rate, the growth rate in banking and financial services is 44.6%. In case of work contract services, growth rate in Service taxes is 39.9% and in case of goods transportation services, it is 41%. These are also indications of high level of economic activities taking place in the economy and seems to be in commensurate with the growth rate projections for the FY 2015-16 as announced by the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) two days back.