Indirect tax collections rise by 36.8% in October

Collection of indirect taxes during the month of October registered an increase of 36.8 per cent to Rs58,691 crore compared with collections in October 2014 of Rs42,897 crore. This wa led by a massive over 66 per cent increase in excise duty collections.

Indirect taxes include customs duty, central excise duty and service tax.

These collections reflect in part increase due to additional measures taken by the union government from time to time, including the excise increases on diesel and petrol, the increase in clean energy cess, the withdrawal of exemptions for motor vehicles, capital goods and consumer durables, and from June 2015, the increase in Service Tax rates from 12.36 per cent to 14 per cent.

Stripped of all these additional measures, indirect tax collections increased 11.6 per cent during April-October 2015 as compared to April-October 2014.

Indirect tax collections rose by 35.9 per cent to Rs3.82 lakh crore for the first seven months of the current fiscal as compared to Rs2.81 lakh crore in the same period last fiscal, on account of robust growth in all the three classes of indirect taxes.

Customs collections too remained on an upward trajectory, rising by 16.8 per cent to Rs1.22 lakh crore in April-October 2015 from Rs1.04 lakh crore during the same period last financial year.

The Service Tax collection increased 26.1 per cent to Rs 1.12 lakh crore in April-October 2015 from Rs89,379 crore in April-October 2014.

Collections on account of Central Excise increased from Rs87,588 crore in April-October 2014 to Rs1, 47,685 crore in April-October 2015, registering an increase of 68.6 per cent. 

Indirect tax collections so far have reached 59.2 per cent of the Rs 6.4 lakh crore annual target, which is 18.8 per cent higher than what it had collected in 2014-15. These collections continue to suggest a healthy growth in the underlying tax base.

The higher growth will help meet likely shortfall in direct tax collection and disinvestment receipts.