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Pays Rs 31 Cr As Income-Tax, Supercedes Shah Rukh By 0.01 Cr
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New Delhi: Top Bollywood stars seem to have beaten the economic slowdown to post handsome growth in their advance tax payments. Not only did the top 10 earners pay 17.7% more in taxes than the previous year, the industry also threw up a new ‘Hero No.1’. Akshay Kumar, who paid a whopping Rs 31 crore to the I-T department, narrowly pipped Shah Rukh Khan (Rs 30.99 crore) to the title of Bollywood’s highest tax payer of the year 2008-09. The Top 10 Bollywood stars together paid Rs 107 crore as taxes while the same set had paid Rs 90.90 crore in 2007-08, when the economic boom was at its peak. The other two Khans — Salman and Saif Ali — were at number three and four having paid Rs 14 crore and Rs 8.6 crore, respectively. As far as taxes go, Bollywood industry’s Jodi No.1 was Saif Ali and his girlfriend Kareena Kapoor, who herself was placed at No.7 with a deposit of Rs 3.7 crore into the tax kitty. The duo clearly beat theBachchans, Abhishek and Aishwarya, who stood at No.8 and No.6, respectively. Surprisingly, yesteryear superstar Rajesh Khanna continues to be among Bollywood’s big tax payers, coming in at No.5 after paying Rs 6.87 cr, ahead of Big B (Rs 1.25 cr) who slipped to the 10th rank from No.7 last year. Khanna had paid Rs 11.90 crore last year, the thirdhighest sum after after SRK and Akshay Kumar