Barring mainly government-owned banks, private sector lenders and some of India's largest companies headquartered in India's financial capital have reported dips in advance tax payments for the October to December quarter.

Section 208 of the Indian Income Tax Act, 1961 makes it obligatory for all companies and individuals to pay advance tax in four quarters of a financial year when the annual advance income tax payable is Rs 5,000 or more.

Collections are still underway in some centres, but the list available with the income tax department till now shows that State Bank of India [Get Quote] has emerged as the top tax payer for the third quarter.

TAXING TIMES
Companies	(Advance tax for Oct-Dec quarter)		Figures in Rs crore
	Oct-Dec '07	Oct-Dec '08	% change
SBI	1088	1700	56
BoI	210	370	76
BoB	200	220	10
Central Bank Of India	73	163	123
HDFC Bank [Get Quote]	280	250	-10.7
ICICI Bank [Get Quote]	500	470	-0.6
IndusInd Bank [Get Quote]	20	22	10
HDFC	215	279	30
LIC [Get Quote] Housing	33	44	33
Reliance Industries [Get Quote]	519	440	-15.22
L&T	180	312	73
Tata Chemicals [Get Quote]	57	83	45.61
TCS [Get Quote]	108	129	-19
Tata Steel [Get Quote]	750	230	-69
Tata Motors [Get Quote]	59	0
Indian Hotels	50	0
BPCL [Get Quote]	117	0
Tata Sons	145	40	-72
Tata Power [Get Quote]	25	28	-12
Ultratech	140	65	-53
Mahindra & Mahindra	60	4	-93.3

Another government-owned bank, Central Bank of India, has recorded the highest growth in advance taxes at 123 per cent. Other state-owned banks � Bank of Baroda [Get Quote], Bank of India and Dena Bank [Get Quote] � have also seen robust growth in advance tax payments.

The trend, however, is reversed for private lenders with both ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank recording a fall in payments.

Among companies in this early top 20 list, Larsen & Toubro and Tata Chemicals are the only two companies to have paid higher taxes. All the others, including Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), India's largest company by market capitalisation, and Mahindra & Mahindra, India's largest tractor maker, trail last year's collections. In RIL's case, the lower tax partly reflects the sale of shares in its new refinery Reliance Petroleum [Get Quote].

Among the Tata group companies, collections have fallen for Tata Steel, Tata Sons and Tata Power, while Indian Hotels and Tata Motors have not paid advance taxes.

Although Tata Steel has paid lower advance taxes for the quarter, cumulative payments for three quarters of the present financial year are higher at Rs 1,675 crore against Rs 1,418 crore last year, official sources said.

Among early birds in the public sector, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd has also not paid any advance taxes for the quarter.

Housing companies -- HDFC and LIC housing Finance Company -- have paid higher taxes despite the slowdown in the real estate sector. Official sources said that the collection for other real estate companies appear to be not so encouraging.