Government has rebuffed reports in a certain section of media that the growth of direct tax collection for the last financial year has fallen and buoyancy of the direct tax collection as compared to the GDP growth has reached negative.<br />'' <br />''In a statement, Finance Ministry said, fall in the collection of direct taxes is on expected lines and is temporary in nature due to the historic tax reforms and much higher refunds issued during the same period.<br />'' <br />''AIR Correspondent reports that Government provided a concessional tax regime of 22 per cent for all existing domestic companies in case they did not avail any other specified exemption.<br />'' <br />''Tax for new manufacturing companies and Minimum alternate tax for various other companies was also reduced to 15 per cent in order to boost investment in the numerous sectors. Providing relief to individual tax payers, Income up to 5 lakh rupees was exempted from taxation whereas the standard deduction was also enhanced to 50 thousand rupees.<br />'' <br />''The revenue impact of the various reforms introduced related to taxation has been estimated to be nearly 1 lakh 68 thousand crore.<br />'' <br />''Finance Ministry has said, after removing the effect of the historic tax reforms, a higher growth rate in direct taxes as compared to growth rate in the GDP has been observed.<br />'' <br />''<span style="color: #222222;">The growth even in these challenging times proves that the recent efforts for widening of the tax base introduced by the Government are yielding results.</span><br />