TOI Budget 2018 special: What happened to the cesses you paid?
Times of India
January 24, 2018
With Budget 2018 round the corner, you may be taking comfort in the hope that this year may see no new cess announcement thanks to the implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) last year. But what about the money that you have already paid over the years towards cesses? Till last year, before GST, India had 20 cesses including Swachh Bharat cess, Krishi Kalyan cess, Clean energy cess, Education cess etc., each levied for funding a particular purpose.
But what is surprising is that money collected from some of these cesses is lying unused. According to the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), six major cesses fetched the government Rs 4 lakh crore till 2016-17. Of this, over Rs 1.81 lakh crore, or nearly 45 per cent of the funds collected, remained unutilised and were not transferred from the government's Consolidated Fund of India to the dedicated funds or the intended schemes.
(Explore 2 decades of budget files here)
Out of Rs 7,885.54 crore collected from Research and Development (R&D) cess during 1996-2017, only Rs 609.46 crore (7.73 per cent) was utilized towards its aim. The story is somewhat similar for Rs 83,497 collected from Secondary and Higher Education Cess (SHEC) during 2006-17, which remained untransferred to the earmarked fund.
Also, cesses as a percentage of Centre's tax revenue saw a rise in last few years as unlike tax revenues, collections from cess and surcharge was not shared with states.
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