New Delhi: It is a question of mere interpretation whether growth in revenue collection is the result of overall economic growth and personal economic well being of the people of India or it is just the callous money collection system whose primary interest is to collect more and more to show how effective they are?

This question has become important at this moment because of the country is facing the music of steep hike in prices and the inflation has crossed the double digit mark and hovering round 11 percent.

Amid heavy criticism the Ministry of Finance has come forward today with a release that the Collection from Corporate Income Tax and Personal Income Tax as on 21st June, 2008 is Rs. 49,411 crore exhibiting a growth rate of 43.45% over previous year.

The collection from Corporate Income Tax stands at Rs 30,655 crore at growth rate of 39.81% over previous year, while the collection from Personal Income Tax is Rs. 18,756 crore showing a growth rate of 49.82% over previous year.

The buoyancy in the tax collection is significant considering the fact that refunds to the tune of Rs. 10,810 crore have been issued till date at a growth rate of 33.7% over previous year.

If this is the fact, government has to refund 57.63 percent of collected personal income tax. It means, they are collecting money from the people who are not liabale for paying that much amount as income tax. It is creating inconvenience to the people killing their time and talent to get back their money.

Is it not a faulty system which creates unnecessary troubles for citizens? Has this over-collection not been used to show that the revenue collection has improved due to good performance of the government? Is it really a good performance?

If we calculate differntly the net revenue collection will be only 7946 crore after making refunds of over collected money out of gross collection of 18,756 crore.

The governent release also said that the advance tax payments by top companies have shown a healthy growth. The highest contribution has come from ONGC followed by SBI and SAIL indicating that the growth is visible in almost all sectors of economy. (EOM)