SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 13 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 19 of 98

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Which of the following is an example of a non-tax revenue source for the government?

(a)Value-added tax
(b)Fees and fines
(c)Corporate income tax
(d)Personal income tax

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Government revenue receipts split into two kinds: tax revenue and non-tax revenue.

A tax is a compulsory payment with no direct service given in return. Fees and fines are neither: a fee is a charge for a specific service the government renders, and a fine is a penalty for breaking a rule.

The other three names in the list carry the word tax and behave like one. The non-tax source is option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Value-added tax — Value-added tax is an indirect tax on the value added at each stage of production and sale. It is tax revenue however the burden finally falls.
(c)
Corporate income tax — Corporate income tax is a direct tax on the profits of companies, collected by the Centre. A tax cannot at the same time be a non-tax source.
(d)
Personal income tax — Personal income tax is a direct tax on individual income. That it is progressive changes how much people pay, not which category the receipt falls in.

Concept

Revenue receipts are the receipts that neither create a liability for the government nor reduce any asset it holds, and they come in two kinds.

Tax revenue is compulsory payments with no direct service in return — income tax, corporation tax, GST, customs duty.

Non-tax revenue is everything else the government earns: interest on loans it has advanced, dividends and profits from public sector undertakings, fees charged for services, fines and penalties, and grants received.

Keep the second split in view as well. Capital receipts — borrowings, disinvestment proceeds, recovery of loans — sit outside both boxes, because they either create a liability or reduce an asset.

Key facts

Revenue receipts are classified into tax revenue and non-tax revenue.
A tax is a compulsory payment made without any direct service in return.
Fees, fines, interest receipts, dividends from public sector undertakings and grants are non-tax revenue.
Capital receipts such as borrowings and disinvestment proceeds are a separate category from revenue receipts.

Study next

Revenue receipts against capital receipts in the Union BudgetDirect and indirect taxes with examples of eachMajor heads of non-tax revenue of the Union government

Common traps

Reading a fee as a tax simply because the money is paid to the government.
Sorting the options into direct and indirect taxes, when the stem sorts them into tax and non-tax.

Economy in this same shift is also asked as policy rather than as budget vocabulary — the objectives of the Industrial Policy Statement 1980 at GA Q.3.

Learn the receipts tree as one diagram: revenue against capital first, then tax against non-tax.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.