Patna, Jan. 15: The comme-rcial taxes department has registered almost a 25 per cent collection growth between April and December in the current financial year as against the same period last fiscal.

“Our tax collection has recorded an increase of 24.62 per cent in the first three quarters (April to December) of the current fiscal. The department has been able to mop up tax of Rs 5,117.24 crore as against Rs 4106.30 crore during of the last fiscal,” com-mercial taxes department commissioner Rajit Punhani told The Telegraph.

Despite the increase, the department has fallen short of its December target by about Rs 428 crore. The department had set a target to collect Rs 5,545.45 crore till December.

The department, which collected Rs 6,685 crore as against its target of Rs 7,124 crore in 2010-11, has set a target of collecting Rs 8,930 crore by the end of the fiscal. Sources said the target could be high given the pace of collections in the first three quarters.

The department hopes to achieve the target by the end of the current fiscal. They claimed that tax collections usually pick up in the last quarter of a financial year.

The officials pointed out that the tax collection in December 2011 was 31.24 per cent higher than December 2010. The department earned Rs 688.74 crore in December 2011 as against Rs 524.77 crore in the same month in 2010.

Professional tax, imposed by the state government in September 2011, has swelled the department’s kitty by Rs 26 crore till November 2011 and it is expected that the amount would touch the Rs 75 crore mark by the end of this fiscal.

Besides, the commercial taxes department has set an ambitious target of completing the computerisation process by the end of March. This would not only enable traders to get their work such as filing returns, making payments, registration, serving notices, done through Internet but it would also improve tax collections and prevent tax evasions.

Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, who also holds the finance and commercial taxes department portfolios, recently emphasised on strengthening the IT infrastructure in the department to check tax evasion and corruption.

“It has been found that manual intervention cannot stop tax evasion or corruption. If we have to weed out these shortcomings, we will have to strengthen the IT network in the department. Only then can the department check tax evasion and corruption,” Modi had said.