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Income Tax Returns filing touched a new high of 6.77 crore on July 31, Income Tax Department said on Wednesday.
July 31 was due date for filing returns by individuals and Hindu Undivided Family (HUF), whose accounts need not be audited. Now, non-filers can submit returns by December 31 but with a late fee up to ₹5,000 and after losing many advantages such as carrying forward loss.
The total number of ITRs for AY 2023-24 filed till July 31 are more than 6.77 crore, which is 16.1 per cent more than the total ITRs for AY 2022-23 (5.83 crore) filed till July 31, 2022,” the Department said in a statement. Further, it said that On July 31 itself, over 64 lakh ITRs filed. The e-filing portal also observed its highest per hour rate of over 4.96 lakh of ITR filing between 5 PM and 6 PM on July 31 with highest per second rate of ITR filing of 486 (16:35:06) and highest per minute rate of ITR filing of 8,622 (17:54).
“The Department also received 53.67 lakh ITRs till July 31, from first time filers, a fair indication of widening of tax base,” the statement said. It listed campaigns on social media along with targeted e-mail and SMS campaigns helped to achieve record number of filing.
Out of the total nearly 49 per cent (3.33 crore) are ITR-1, around 12 per cent (81.12 lakh) ITR-2, around 11 per cent (75.4 lakhs) ITR-3 (75.40 lakh), around 27 per cent (1.81 crore) ITR-4 and 0.94 per cent (6.4 lakhs) are ITR-5 to 7. Over 46 per cent of these ITRs have been filed using the online ITR utility available on the e-filing portal and the balance have been filed using offline ITR utilities., the statement added.
The department noted that a large number of taxpayers did their due diligence by comparing data of their financial transactions by viewing their Annual Information Statement (AIS) and Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS). A substantial portion of the data for ITR-1,2,3 and 4 was already prefilled with data pertaining to salary, interest, dividend, personal information, tax payment including TDS related information, brought forward losses, MAT credit etc to further ease compliance for taxpayers. The taxpayers used this facility extensively, resulting in smoother and faster filing of ITRs, the department claimed.
E-verification process
The process of e-verification through Aadhaar OTP and other methods is important for the Department to commence processing of the ITR and to issue refunds, if any. “It is encouraging to note that 5.63 crore returns have been e-verified, out of which more than 5.27 crore are through Aadhaar-based OTP (94 per cent). Of the e-verified ITRs, more than 3.44 crore ITRs for AY 2023-24 have been processed (61 per cent) July 31,” the statement added.
The e-filing helpdesk team has handled approximately 5 lakh queries from taxpayers in the month of July supporting the taxpayers proactively during the peak filing period.
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