Govt's income tax earning grew over 50% in past two years

The total gross income from the income tax return rose by 51% since 2013, Income Tax Department data show. 

Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) released a data relating to the distribution of income and tax payable in respect of returns filed for Assessment Years 2013-14 and 2014-15. With this release, detailed income-tax data for three recent assessment years have become available in public domain enabling researchers, scholars, policy makers, students and all other stakeholders to make a better analysis of the trends in incomes and tax payments. 

For the AY 2012-2013, the data was already available on the public domain.

If we look at the data, the trend shows that for the AY12-13, the total sum of gross income was 12,14,289 crore from 2,89,25,598 tax returns filed in that year. Following that Assessment year, in AY13-14, the total gross income rose by 24.5%. In that year,  3,35,85,294 returns were filed which gave the total gross income of 15,12,433 crore. 

Then, in Assessment year 2014-15, the total gross income rose by 21.7% from the previous year to Rs 18,41,782 crore, and as compared to AY12-13, the gross income increased by 51%.

According to India Budget, taxes on income of individuals, firms etc other than Companies, under the Income-tax Act, 1961, the revised Estimate of Taxes on Income for 2013-2014 was Rs 2,41,691 crore as against the Budget Estimate of Rs 2,47,639 crore. Budget Estimate for 2014-15 was Rs 2,84,266 crore.

However, for AY2015-16, the revised Estimate of Taxes on Income for 2014-2015 was Rs 2,78,599 crore as against the Budget Estimate of Rs 2,84,266 crore. The Budget Estimate for 2015-16 was 3,27,367 crore.