Centre sets big Income Tax targets despite tense economic situation

Hyderabad: Even as India’s economy is expected to take a nosedive due to coronavirus and subsequent lockdown, the Union finance ministry on Thursday set a target of Rs 13.19 lakh crore for the Income-Tax (IT) department for financial year (FY) 2020-21.

Though the target is not very high compared to the Rs 13.8 lakh crore target for FY 2019-20, I-T officials say given current scenario, achieving the target would be a Herculean task.

According to an internal circular sent to principal chief commissioners of the I-T department, the target for corporate tax has been set at Rs 6.81 lakh crore, personal I-T Rs 6.25 lakh crore and security transaction tax Rs 13,000 crore.

Region-wise, the combined target for Andhra Pradesh and Telangana regions is Rs 73,809 crore, Mumbai Rs 4.07 lakh crore, Delhi Rs 1.89 lakh crore, and for Karnataka and Goa Rs 1.40 lakh crore. For Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, the target is Rs 91,227 crore, for Kerala Rs 20,194 crore and Gujarat Rs 65,237 crore.

“Budgetary targets have been fixed keeping in view revenue potential of region, based on weighted average growth rate of collections during last three years,” an official note from CBDT said.

The statistical growth rate for a region has been moderated by averaging out all-India growth to narrow gap between national and regional growth target.

“It is ambitious, given present circumstances, even Herculean for the I-T department. Even before the Covid pandemic and lockdown, we had an economic slowdown,” officials told Deccan Chronicle.

As against the target of '13.8 lakh crore for last FY, the all-India collection stood at around '10 lakh crore. In FY 2018-19, total collections were '10.94 lakh crore.

With coronavirus entering India in March, a crucial month for taxmen given the FY ending on March 31, tax collection operations were badly hit.