Providing comfort to the government on the revenue front amid fiscal stress, direct tax collection is moving closer to the revised Budget target for 2020-21 and may get a further thrust from the last instalment of the advance tax payment, the deadline for which ended on Monday.

The contraction in net direct tax collection narrowed to 5 per cent year-on-year as on March 15 compared to a 9 per cent decline seen in January. In absolute terms, net collection stood at Rs 8.2 trillion against Rs 8.67 trillion in the same period last year, according to the provisional numbers shared by a ...