Only 1% of Indians paid tax in 2013
Picture Courtesy: REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee
Latest data disclosed by the Government for assessment year 2012-13 has revealed that only 1 percent of Indians paid tax during the previous financial year.
As part of a transparency drive, the government has made public direct tax data for last 15 years. In addition, it has also made individual tax data public for the financial year ending March 2012.
According to the individual tax payer data, a total of 2.87 crore individuals filed income tax returns for that year, but 1.62 crore of them did not pay any tax – leaving the number of taxpayers at around 1.25 crore. During the year, the country’s population was close to 123 crore, resulting in a ratio of 1:100 for taxpayers.
For 89 percent of taxpayers (around 1.1 crore), the tax outgo was less than Rs 1.5 lakh. Their average tax payable worked out to roughly Rs 21,00 and resulted in a total collected of Rs 23,000 crore.
In comparison, three individuals in the bracket of 100-500 crore, paid a total of Rs 435 crore in taxes. In addition, over 5,430 individuals paid income tax of over Rs 1 crore, resulting in a total outgo of Rs 8,907 crore.
The overall data revealed that that the total income tax collections rose nine-fold to 2.86 lakh crore in 2015-16, from Rs 31,764 crore in 2000-01. Also, for the assessment year 2012-13, a majority of the individuals who paid tax earned an annual salary between Rs 5.5 lakh and Rs 9.5 lakh.
For the assessment year, 17,515 individuals collected salaries in the range of Rs 1-5 crore.
