Shah Rukh in top 20 income tax payers' list

NEW DELHI: Sounds strange, but India’s top billionaires don’t even figure among the top 20 crorepati income tax payers in the country. A ranking of top tax payers on the basis of advance tax collections up to December, 2007, suggests that none of the industrialists in the country are among the top-20 list though Bollywood super star Shah Rukh Khan (8th) and UP chief minister Ms Mayawati (19th) have figured on the list. SundayET has procured the list of 134 individual tax payers in the country who have paid Rs 1.5 cr or above as advance taxes up to December 2007.

Significantly, Punjab, which is among the prosperous states in India, has no individuals who paid an advance tax of Rs 1.5 cr and above this fiscal, whereas Gujarat has only three crorepati taxpayers. Relatively poorer states such as Orissa and Jharkhand have one each on the list, whereas West Bengal has two such individuals. Not surprisingly, Maharashtra tops with 54, followed by Delhi (16), Tamil Nadu (15), Karnataka (13) and Andhra Prasdesh (12).

Chairman of Max India Analjit Singh, Wipro Technologies chairman Azim Premji, AV Birla group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla, Vodafone Essar MD Asim Ghosh, architect Hafeez Contractor, Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals MD Naresh Trehan and Infosys co-chairman Nandan Nilekani have all figured on the list of top 100 tax payers in the country. Significantly, neither the chairman of Reliance Industries Mukesh Ambani nor chairman of ADAG Anil Ambani is on the list.

Sources in the finance ministry said that most industrialists in India earn their fortunes not from their salaries, but through dividends, for which no individual needs to pay taxes. “A company pays taxes on dividends, but no individual needs to pay taxes on that. Thus most promoters who earn a fortune by the way of dividends need not pay any tax at all. Thus, many industrialists don’t figure among top tax payers in the country,” sources said.

In fact, the highest tax payer of the country during this fiscal, who paid Rs 58 cr up to December, 2007, is not a celebrity at all. Also, the second, third, fifth and sixth highest tax payers in the country till December, 2007, happen to be from the same family in Mumbai. They paid a combined tax of Rs 179 cr.

Among the celebrities, Shah Rukh Khan is not alone on the list. Bollywood stars who have figured among tax crorepatis in the country, include Akshay Kumar, Abhishek Bachchan, Salman Khan, Sanjay Dutt, and Aamir Khan. Sachin Tendulkar who paid Rs 2 cr as advance tax also figures among the top 100.

Shantanu Nandan Sharma, TNN