India Inc seems to be leveraging well on the country's growth story and is poised to post better earnings if the corporate advance tax payments made in the December quarter are any indication.

The advance tax outlays of the top 100 companies for the October-December period grew 17.5 per cent over last year while the overall advance tax collection by the Mumbai circle - the country's largest - for the quarter is expected to grow over 20 per cent, an Income Tax source said here today.

"We are confident of achieving an 18 per cent growth in tax collection for the entire year," the source said.

Barring cement, companies in all the sectors such as banking, auto and pharma have paid more advance tax than last year.

Reliance Industries' advance tax payment grew to Rs 1,191-crore from the Rs 834-crore it had paid last year while in spite of some concerns raised over its performance, the country's biggest lender, SBI , paid an advance tax of Rs 1,850-crore as against Rs 1,795-crore last year.

Advance tax payment is a staggered system of paying taxes and is generally seen as a barometer of a particular company's performance as the tax payments are made in line with profit expectations.

From the Tata stable, Tata Steel posted an impressive growth in its advance tax payment to Rs 1,000-crore from Rs 650-crore, software major TCS' payment jumped to Rs 230-crore from Rs 177-crore while Tata Motors' payment has more than doubled to Rs 220-crore as against Rs 100-crore in the year-ago period.