New Delhi: A goof up by companies in filing corporate tax after the introduction of a single challan system depressed the collection figures and irked Finance Ministry, which was fast to detect the mistake running into Rs 6,120 crore.

The Ministry scrutinised the figures as it was intrigued by the sluggish 5.6 per cent growth in Corporate Tax mop up despite an impressive industrial growth and hefty profits netted by India Inc.

The goof up occurred as many companies by mistake ticked income tax instead of corporate tax in the single challan system introduced this year for both income and corporate taxes, official sources told reporters in New Delhi today (Oct 15, 2004).

The Finance Ministry was fast to correct the figures and corporate tax collections now showed Rs 26,223 crore till September after Rs 6,120 crore, wrongly shown as accruals in income tax, was added to corporate tax kitty.

The correction ensured that corporate tax growth was a robust 38 per cent instead of the sub normally low 5.6 per cent in the first half of this fiscal.

The correction, however, brought down the Income Tax figures, which had earlier shown an astronomical growth of 74 per cent at Rs 25,117 crore or Rs 6,120 crore higher than the actual figure.

The corrected figure of income tax stands at Rs 18,997 crore till September, showing a growth of 31.54 per cent from 14,442 crore in the year ago period.

The overall growth in direct taxes shown was more or less same at 35.21 per cent at Rs 45,220 crore in the first half of 2004-05.