Centre eyes 13.35 lakh crore from direct taxes

New Delhi: The government has re-calibrated and fixed the direct taxes collection target for this financial year at Rs 13.35 lakh crore, a task that the CBDT chief said is difficult but achievable.

He also said that the government can only think of further 'lowering' corporate tax rates once the exemptions and deductions in this sector are phased out.

"In the last revised estimates, our target (for 2019-20 financial year) was fixed as Rs 13.78 lakh crore which appeared to be rather unrealistic because it was showing an increase of almost 24 per cent year-on-year. This is the submission we made while budget deliberations were going on.

I am happy to say that the government in its wisdom was appreciative of that and they went by the actual collections which happened last year. And consequent to that the budget (collection target for direct taxes) has now been fixed at Rs 13.35 lakh crore," said CBDT Chairman Pramod Chandra Mody.

This translates, he said, to about 17.5 per cent increase year-on-year. Now, this (current target) has to be seen in the perspective of the historical growth rate in collections in the past three years, the CBDT chief said.

"This gives me lot of hope and confidence that we will be able to achieve the 17.5 per cent growth that we are mandated to achieve. It would be a difficult task but not totally unachievable," he said. The I-T department had collected Rs 11.37 crore under the direct taxes category during the last fiscal of 2018-19 and the finance ministry had initially set the target for this year at Rs 13.80 lakh crore.