India Inc may continue to show robust growth in profits even this fiscal going by the corporate taxes collected so far by the Centre. The latest data released by the Finance Ministry on Tuesday showed that the corporate tax collections registered a 42.37 per cent increase in April-December 15 to Rs 98,391 crore as compared to collections of Rs 69,110 crore in the same period last year.

For fiscal 2007-08, the Centre has pegged the budget estimate for corporate tax collections at Rs 1,68,401 crore. Official sources also said that the latest data on corporate tax revenues does not fully reflect the advance tax collections that may come in under the December 15 instalment and that the final picture on advance tax front would emerge only later this week.

The data available from certain metros show that some of the top private sector companies in the industrial and financial services space have even doubled their advance tax outgo for the December 15 instalment.

According to sources, real estate major DLF has paid Rs 570 crore as advance tax for the third instalment that was due on December 15. The company had paid Rs 480 crore in the first instalment (June 15) and Rs 520 crore in the second instalment (September 15).

For the December 15 instalment, sources said that SBI had paid Rs 1,095 crore as advance tax, the figure for Reliance Industries and ICICI stood at Rs 1,045 crore and Rs 500 crore, respectively.

Meanwhile, personal income-tax collections (including fringe benefit tax (FBT), securities transaction tax (STT) and banking cash transaction tax (BCTT)) have registered a 42.83 per cent increase during April-December 15 at Rs 65,774 crore, up from Rs 46,051 crore recorded in the same period last year.