Direct tax collections in fiscal 2009 has outshone the last fiscal by around 6% mainly on back of high advance tax payments by state-run  companies,but the final figures may yet fall short of the government target.

Against a pared down target of Rs 3,45,000 crore, direct tax collection as on March 31, 2009, stood at 3,29,000 crore, which is about Rs 20,000 crore higher than that of last fiscal. Tax officials that SundayET spoke to said the figure may go up by Rs 3,000 crore once the final adjustments are made.

According to a SundayET analysis of top 50 corporate advance tax payers for FY 09, 21 companies including seven out of the top 10, turned out to be public sector undertakings (PSU). The advance tax collection, which does not include tax deducted at source, is Rs 131,800 cr in FY09, 40% of net direct tax collection.

PSUs have played a major role in improving the direct tax collection. The advance tax numbers till March 15 clearly show that, a finmin official told SundayET.

In fact, Rs 21,723 cr, or 6.6% of the net direct tax collection of the financial year 2008-9, came from advance tax collection from the top five corporate advance tax payers, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), State Bank of India (SBI), Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), Life Insurance Corporation of India (LICI) and National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC).

Only seven multinational companies (MNCs), Citibank, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Chase Bank and Siemens figure in the list of top 50 corporate advance tax payers during 2008-09. Nineteen banks figure in the list of top 50 corporate advance tax payers, out of which 11 are government banks.