New Delhi, Dec 2 (NationPress) India's corporate tax revenue has surged by more than double, rising from Rs 4,57,719 crore in 2020-21 to Rs 9,86,767 crore in 2024-25, as informed to Parliament on Tuesday.

The Minister of State for Finance, Pankaj Choudhary, disclosed in a written response during the Rajya Sabha session that the RBI, in its October 2025 monthly bulletin titled "Resilience and Revival: India’s Private Corporate Sector," indicated that during the pandemic, even with a drop in sales, the reduction in raw material costs due to falling commodity prices, limited wage growth, and a favorable base effect led to a remarkable rise in net profit at the aggregate level by 115.6%.

As a result, the net profit margin exceeded pre-Covid levels. Following the pandemic, a significant increase in sales driven by pent-up demand propelled corporate profits from Rs. 2.5 lakh crore in 2020-21 to Rs. 7.1 lakh crore in 2024-25.

The corporate tax revenue has consequently increased by over 200% from FY 2020-21 to FY 2024-25, despite a cut in corporate tax rates, Choudhary explained.

The minister emphasized that corporate tax rates have been systematically lowered since 2016 to foster growth, stimulate investment, and generate more employment opportunities. Simultaneously, various exemptions and incentives available to corporations have been phased out to streamline the tax framework.

The Finance Act of 2016 reduced corporate tax rates to 29% of total income, followed by the 2017 Finance Act, which lowered rates to 25% for smaller domestic companies with annual turnover below Rs 50 crore to enhance their viability. In 2019, corporate tax rates were further reduced to 22%.

According to the Finance Act of 2024, tax rates for foreign companies were cut from 40% to 35% (excluding those subject to special rates) to encourage investment and job creation.

The minister noted that the tax base has expanded significantly over the years, a development attributed to various legislative, administrative, and enforcement actions undertaken by the government to enhance voluntary compliance and broaden the tax net.

Initiatives such as NUDGE (Non-intrusive usage of data to guide and enable) campaigns have been launched to improve compliance ecology and assist taxpayers in reviewing and correcting their ITRs, if necessary, by submitting revised returns.

Furthermore, the extension of TDS and TCS provisions to include more financial transactions, as well as the enhancement of third-party financial transaction reporting to gather comprehensive data for identifying tax evasion or under-reporting of income, are among the measures adopted.

In addition, the deployment of a non-filers monitoring system (NMS) to identify potential taxpayers through third-party data and the mandatory quoting of PAN connected to Aadhaar have contributed to expanding the tax base.

Actions have also been taken against the generation and utilization of black money domestically and internationally through laws such as the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015 and the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act, 2016.

Additionally, efforts to encourage voluntary compliance through superior taxpayer services, expedited grievance resolution, ease of tax payments and return filing, and the promotion of digital transactions have also been undertaken to boost tax revenues, the minister added.