[GTO]

From the Times Of India email newsletter:

• Who: 5.1 crore individuals filed income tax returns (out of 7 crore taxpayers) in 2017-18. Indians paid Rs 4.2 lakh crore as personal income tax in 2017-18. That accounts for 42% of government's total direct tax revenue. Direct tax collection has gone up by 18% from the previous year, the highest increase in a decade. The number of salaried taxpayers is rising at a faster pace than the non-salaried, although the count is the same - 2.3 crore.

• How much: The three highest tax-paying income brackets in 2017-18 are: annual income of over Rs 500 crore (that paid Rs 7.2 lakh cr in taxes), income between Rs 5.5 lakh and Rs 9.5 lakh (Rs 6.3 lakh cr tax paid) and Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 3.5 lakh (Rs 4.3 lakh cr). The number of individual taxpayers disclosing income above Rs 1 crore has increased from 48,416 in 2014-15 to 81,344 in 2017-18, a growth of 68%.

• Where: Four states — Delhi (Rs 1.37 lakh cr), Maharashtra (Rs 3.8 lakh cr), Karnataka (Rs 1 lakh cr) and Tamil Nadu (Rs 67,584 cr) — account for 70% of the government's total direct tax collection. Direct taxes make up 52% of the total tax revenue.

• What: Government spent Rs 6,087 crore in collecting the direct tax, which is 0.61% of tax earned.

• Why: We are paying more tax also because we are earning more. The number of salaried taxpayers has increased from 1.7 crore in 2014-15 to 2.33 crore in 2017-18, a rise of 37%. The average income declared by salaried taxpayers has also gone up by 19% (from Rs 5.76 lakh in 2014-15 to Rs 6.84 lakh in 2017-18).

Article 1, 2, 3 & 4

[turbospooler]

Haryana is not in top 75% of the contributors of tax?
With Gurugram boasting to host maximum number of Fortune 500 companies, where is the money then?
It is also heavily industrialized with the likes of Maruti, Honda and their multiple auto component makers in Haryana.

[V.Narayan]

Very encouraging news. Puts a dent into the arguments of the nay sayers that this Govt's efforts to increase the tax collections and base have not worked. The actions are working. All the change can't be clocked in a day. Onwards & Upwards.

PS: there seems to be a typo in the first para of the boxed commentary. Tax collection and data in para 2 don't tally.

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by turbospooler

Haryana is not in top 75% of the contributors of tax?
With Gurugram boasting to host maximum number of Fortune 500 companies, where is the money then?
It is also heavily industrialized with the likes of Maruti, Honda and their multiple auto component makers in Haryana.

Probably Gurugram falls under the Delhi IT circle. Do they have an IT circle of their own?

[avira_tk]

We are paying more tax also because we are earning more. The number of salaried taxpayers has increased from 1.7 crore in 2014-15 to 2.33 crore in 2017-18, a rise of 37%. The average income declared by salaried taxpayers has also gone up by 19% (from Rs 5.76 lakh in 2014-15 to Rs 6.84 lakh in 2017-18).

Always take government data with a pinch of salt and in case of TOI, search if there is any truth.

Inflation adjusted value of 5.76 is 6.85 in the four year period. The growth is zero but nominal value is up 19%. More people are in the tax bracket because it hasn't been adjusted for inflation for a long time. I'm not sure if collection higher than last year qualifies as an achievement, the upward trend is near guaranteed.

[selfdrive]

As of 2017:
Population 135 crores
Those aged between 25 to 54:
Males: 27 crores
Females: 25.5 crores

Assuming 80% males & 5% females in this age group are employed, we hav emore than 23 crore working people. feel free to tweak the percentages, maybe we have this info readily available somewhere but we should have 20+ crore working people. Of which, we have 7 crore tax payers.

Essentially, taxpayer percentage of earning population is at the most around 30%. So there is a lot of scope for the taxman to increase that and bring more people in the tax paying net.

Ideally all earners should pay tax and then maybe the really needy ones get rebates. That would be the biggest incentive for all to file tax returns. Maybe I have a different set of expectations.

[Santoshbhat]

Originally Posted by avira_tk

We are paying more tax also because we are earning more. The number of salaried taxpayers has increased from 1.7 crore in 2014-15 to 2.33 crore in 2017-18, a rise of 37%. The average income declared by salaried taxpayers has also gone up by 19% (from Rs 5.76 lakh in 2014-15 to Rs 6.84 lakh in 2017-18).

Always take government data with a pinch of salt and in case of TOI, search if there is any truth.

Inflation adjusted value of 5.76 is 6.85 in the four year period. The growth is zero but nominal value is up 19%

You have to read19% average income increase along with 37% increase in the absolute number of salaried taxpayers. Even if you discount the 19% increase in average due to inflation, there is a 9% increase p.a in the tax contribution from this group in the last four years.

[sunilch]

Originally Posted by turbospooler

Haryana is not in top 75% of the contributors of tax?
With Gurugram boasting to host maximum number of Fortune 500 companies, where is the money then?
It is also heavily industrialized with the likes of Maruti, Honda and their multiple auto component makers in Haryana.

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

Probably Gurugram falls under the Delhi IT circle. Do they have an IT circle of their own?

Yes. Read Delhi as NCR in the first post. That basically covers a lot of 'non-Delhi' areas actually. By geography, it is the largest circle.

[avira_tk]

Originally Posted by Santoshbhat

You have to read19% average income increase along with 37% increase in the absolute number of salaried taxpayers. Even if you discount the 19% increase in average due to inflation, there is a 9% increase p.a in the tax contribution from this group in the last four years.

You cannot discount inflation, unless you are window dressing the numbers, more people less money, that's what the numbers say. Nominal increases mean nothing unless you have borrowed heavily.

[mayuresh]

Number of taxpayers up, but salaried still bear the brunt

Link 3 in the OP has observations worth pondering about

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...w/66324459.cms

Only half of the country's doctors pay income tax.

Only one third of chartered accountants pay income tax.

Only 13000 nursing homes and 14500 fashion designers pay income tax.

Further, "pay" does not necessarily imply all of them do so accurately!

A lot is yet to be done to increase the tax net.

[pratyush6]

I usually take the data provided by TOI with a grain of salt. The source mentioned is CBDT, the same kind of figures have popped up at multiple sites, everyone just stating, its not an original article.
Numbers can be glossed over very easily. The real measure of an economy is its GDP numbers and we don't seem to get a clear answer on that.

That said, if everything remains the same, more tax payers not those who file just file an ITR, generally means a better economy. Also as someone stated, one needs to take into account real inflation and not just the inflation %. The percentages to me are a mask and one can tweak them from time to time.

Also, even if we agree with the numbers; anyone who links this to demonetisation and black money must be day dreaming. There is absolutely no way to prove this conclusively.

[TD_GHY]

Originally Posted by turbospooler

Haryana is not in top 75% of the contributors of tax?
With Gurugram boasting to host maximum number of Fortune 500 companies, where is the money then?
It is also heavily industrialized with the likes of Maruti, Honda and their multiple auto component makers in Haryana.

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

Probably Gurugram falls under the Delhi IT circle. Do they have an IT circle of their own?

Originally Posted by sunilch

Yes. Read Delhi as NCR in the first post. That basically covers a lot of 'non-Delhi' areas actually. By geography, it is the largest circle.

Gurugram doesn't fall under Delhi region. Actually, location of industries or offices in a particular place doesn't determine the tax revenue collections from that area. For the purposes of tax collection, where the corporate headquarters for purpose of taxation are registered matters. That is why Mumbai contributes the most to Direct Tax revenue of the country as most companies are registered there. So, companies may be located in Gurgaon, but paying taxes in Mumbai or wherever they're registered.

[ashokrajagopal]

Here is the Time Series data for direct tax collection from Income tax website
https://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/Do...ta-2017-18.pdf

Can someone plot into graph(s) ?

[pratyush6]

I have uploaded the pdf converted to excel, for anyone to play around with!

You could look at adding things like the moving average and trend-lines, which would make the numbers a bit more insightful.

PS. Let me check my graphs again and I can upload them in sometime