On Friday, the Controller General of Accounts released figures for revenue and spending in 2019-20 that told us that almost every figure in the Union Budget of Feb 1 was wrong by a mile.

(1/n)

http://www.cga.nic.in/NSD/Published/3/2020.aspx

Based on this data, there are some eye-opening calculations from @AshokAkaybee in this @bsindia piece. Basically, the tax numbers in the Union Budget presented just a few months ago were off by more than Rs 1.5 lakh crore.

(2/n) https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/why-govt-needs-a-fresh-20-20-vision-for-budget-2020-120053000307_1.html

Note -- this failure to budget properly is not a COVID-19 effect. We're talking about huge errors in revenue projections for *the whole year from April 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020*. The lockdown was announced March 26.

(3/n)

So @AshokAkaybee points out the Budget said that, in 2019-20, gross tax collections had grown "4% over 2018-19.... [But they] actually contracted by 3.4% ... The only time gross tax collections declined in the last three decades was in 2001-02, when they fell by 0.82%."

(4/n)

Last year's Budget also got the revenue projections off by a mile. Two years of this is unjustifiable. For one, states have no idea now how much they will be getting as their share. Bond markets may be hit by unexpected borrowing.

(5/n)

Worst of all, this renders the projections for 2020-21 absurd (to put it mildly). As @AshokAkaybee asks: "Can the government expect corporation tax collections to grow by 22% in 2020-21 in a post-Covid world? Or can there be a 33% jump in income-tax collections?"

(6/n)

The government needs to stand up and take responsibility for these giant, successive errors and exaggerations. And tell us how it intends to avoid them in 2020-21.

(7/n)

Note: some very useful context, including a more comprehensive measure of tax revenue, from Arvind S in this thread https://twitter.com/arvindsubraman/status/1267303956356780032?s=20