Centre's direct tax collection exceeds target

The Centre exceeded its direct tax collection target for financial year 2017-18, collecting Rs 9.95 lakh crore, according to provisional figures released on Monday.

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) collection also showed an upswing making the government optimistic of having a lower than budgeted fiscal and revenue deficit numbers in the financial year that ended on March 31.

"The provisional figures of direct tax collections for fiscal 2017-18 show that net collections are at Rs.9.95 lakh crore which is 17.1% higher than the net collections for fiscal 2016-17. The net direct tax collections represent 101.5% of the Budget Estimates of Rs.9.8 lakh crore," the finance ministry said.

"With almost all of revenues and expenditure accounted for (some minor accounting adjustments remaining), I can confirm that both fiscal deficit and revenue deficit are lower than the revised estimates for 2017-18," Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Garg said.

The government also issued direct tax refunds of Rs 1.49 lakh crore during 2017-18.

The growth rate for net collections for corporate income tax (CIT) is 17.1% and for personal income tax is 18.9%.

The GST collections for February moved upward to Rs 88,047 crore from the provisional figures of Rs 85,170 crore put out by the government a few days ago.

The total GST collection till April 2 was Rs 7.17 lakh crore.