indian tax receipts keep on growing

The Indian Finance Minister has announced that the country collected 33 percent more taxes in the first five months of the current fiscal year than in the same period last year. Of particular significance is a rise of 50 percent in direct taxes including the income tax (33 percent increase), corporations tax (70 percent increase) and similar levies. Service taxes, which did not count in the figures above and which have been progressively extended to a wider category of services, increased by almost 63 percent for a four-month period. Customs and excise duties increased but somewhat more modestly, at 34 and 9 percent respectively. The numbers suggest not only the rapid growth of the Indian economy, which pretty much everyone knows about, but the at least partial success of the Government's ongoing effort to shift the revenue burden from indirect to direct taxes, a key aspect of Indian fiscal policy for the last fifteen years.