The Government's move to make e-filing of income-tax returns mandatory for corporates seems to have paid rich dividends.

Corporates have taken to e-filing of income-tax returns in a big way, with the Income-Tax Department receiving till date 3,16,978 electronically filed returns for the assessment year 2006-07.

Official sources said that this includes 18,970 returns e-filed by corporates from Gujarat for whom the due date for filing was December 31, 2006.

For the assessment year 2005-06, the number of paper returns filed by corporates in Gujarat was about 15,000. In all, the department had received 2.2 lakh paper-based returns from corporates for the assessment year 2005-06.

Meanwhile, the Centre's corporate tax collections surged by 51.8 per cent for April-December 2006 to Rs 92,463 crore. On the other hand, income-tax collections (including FBT, STT and BCTT) increased by 27.1 per cent to Rs 51,565 crore. Securities transaction tax (STT) and banking cash transaction tax (BCTT) stood at Rs 3,226 crore and Rs 357, crore respectively. Fringe benefit tax (FBT) collections stood at Rs 2,933 crore.

Net direct tax collections up to December 31, 2006 grew by 41.8 per cent to Rs 1,44,286 crore. The 41.8-per cent growth has outpaced the targeted growth of 27.5 per cent over last year as per the budget estimates for fiscal 2006-07.