TOI Budget 2018 special: What happened to the cesses you paid?

NEW DELHI: 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.
(Take the TOI challenge and find out if you are smarter than Mr. Jaitley)
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.

In the past three years revenues collected from these cesses and surcharges have tripled. In 2014-15, the collection from cesses and surcharges stood at Rs 75,533 cr. However, in 2016-17 it saw a whopping Rs 2,35,308 cr

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.

Despite the fact that India has abolished many cesses post the GST roll out, we still have to pay some cesses like education cess on imported goods and road cess on petrol.

(Check out salient features of budget speeches over the years)