Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Advance Tax Payments Q4- How has it been for Banks, Corporate Houses and Industries?

The Indian companies pay taxes for every three months and are divided into four quarters namely Q1,Q2,Q3 and Q4, where we currently deal with the Q4 or the Fourth quarter Advance Tax Payment and as conventionally these payments strongly reflect the company’s turnover or the bank’s profit. The amounts that the firms pay show how effectively the business or the performance has been for the estimated period. In the banking sector, the foreign banks have paid more advance taxes than the nationalized banks. Though there are a couple of nationalized banks paying reasonably good figures, the private banks stay far ahead of the same. Industries and manufacturers pay very high advance tax as the prices of metals and bi products are rising like summer heat.

The tax payments this year have been vastly different for each field. The Banks this time have had good business deals and much smoother graphs of profit. Except for State Bank of India (SBI) which went down in profits and has paid really less advance tax this time. The bank restructured its pension schemes and this allotment eventually invited disaster in the tax payments. The approximate calculation is around Rs 1400 crore versus Rs 1900 crore. SBI’s growth has gone down significantly. HDFC has paid a better advance tax of Rs. 500 crore and ICICI paid Rs.475 crores. HSBC recorded Rs.449 crore as its tax pay. LIC has paid 931 crore and IDBI logs paying 160 crores of Advance Tax. Standard Chartered bank has paid the same number as it did the last quarter. Citibank and its peers have paid higher amounts of tax but firms like Union Bank’s numbers remained unchanged and Bank of Baroda with a small change. The banks on an overall basis have an 80% percent growth this year. This time the payment of Advance tax has been good and as what the officials expected. RIL and Tata Steel have been the consecutively largest tax payers this time. There are a lot of firms that have even a zero tax payment on their profiles. Abott Healthcare is one among them. The goal for this FISCAL year might most probably be met. The direct taxes have been paid properly this time and it has come around Rs. 1.52 trillion. The famous Tata Group excluding Tata Steels has bad numbers on their list. Though there was a good sales percentage Tata Motors did not pay the anticipated tax amount due to various reasons. The higher tax payments in Tata Steels are due to the rise in the price of metals. L & T has increasingly paid advance tax of Rs.300 crores as to what it paid Rs. 270 crores for the Q4 previous year.

The rise of tax payments may seem positive but it really isn’t a good sign. The increase is just because of the rise in the cost of living and the budget. This can no way judge the rise in the advance tax payments to be fine. The real increase can be notified only if the cost of living is moderate and the prices as well. This time it is indeed a virtual increase.