Over 6.77 crore Income Tax Returns filed for FY22-23

Over 6.77 crore Income Tax Returns filed for FY 22-23: The Income-tax Department appreciates the taxpayers and tax professionals for making compliance’s in time, leading to a surge in filing of Income-tax Returns (ITRs), resulting in a new record of ITRs filed. The total number of ITRs for AY 2023-24 filed till 31^st July, 2023 are more than 6.77 crore, which is 16.1% more than the total ITRs for AY 2022-23 (5.83 crore) filed till 31^st July 2022.

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The filing of ITRs peaked on 31^st July, 2023 (due date for salaried taxpayers and other non-tax audit cases) with over 64.33 lakh ITRs being filed on a single day i.e. on 31^st July, 2023. The e-filing portal also observed its highest per hour rate of 4,96,559 of ITR filing between 5 PM to 6 PM on 31^st July, 2023, with highest per second rate of ITR filing of 486 (31-Jul-2023: 16:35:06) and highest per minute rate of ITR filing of 8,622 (31-Jul-2023: 17:54).

The Department also received 53.67 lakh ITRs till 31^st July, 2023 from first time filers, a fair indication of widening of tax base.

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Campaigns on Social-media along with targeted e-mail and SMS campaigns were launched to encourage the taxpayers to file their ITRs early. Such concerted efforts led to fruitful results with taxpayers filing their ITRs for AY 2023-24 relatively earlier compared to the corresponding period of the preceding year.

The following data corroborates the same:

ITR filing milestone	AY 2022-23	AY 2023-24
1 crore	8^th July 2022	26^th June 2023
2 crore	20^th July 2022	11^th July 2023
3 crore	25^th July 2022	18^th July 2023
4 crore	28^th July 2022	24^th July 2023
5 crore	30^th July 2022	27^th July 2023
5.83 crore	31^st July 2022	30^th July 2023
6 crore	—	30^th July 2023
6.77 crore	—	31^st July 2023

Out of the 6.77 crore ITRs filed for AY 2023-24, 49.18% of ITRs are ITR-1 (3.33 crore), 11.97% are ITR-2 (81.12 lakh), 11.13% are ITR-3 (75.40 lakh), 26.77% are ITR-4 (1.81 crore) and 0.94% are ITR-5 to 7 (6.40 lakh). Over 46% 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.

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The e-filing system effectively managed heavy traffic throughout the busiest filing season, giving taxpayers a seamless ITR filing experience. On the e-filing platform, there were more than 32 crore successful login attempts between July 1 and July 31, 2023. The number of successful logins was 2.74 crore as of July 31st, 2023.

It is encouraging to learn that a significant portion of taxpayers did due diligence by comparing the information regarding their financial activities by looking at their Annual Information Statement (AIS) and Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS). To make filing ITR-1, 2, 3, and 4 even easier for taxpayers, a significant percentage of the data was previously prepared with information on salary, interest, dividends, personal information, tax payment, including TDS-related information, brought-forward losses, MAT credit, etc. The taxpayers made heavy use of this facility, which made ITR filing easier and quicker.

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The Department needs to complete the e-verification procedure using the Aadhaar OTP and other techniques in order to start processing the ITR and award refunds, if applicable. The fact that 5.63 crore returns have been electronically verified, with over 5.27 crore of those being done so (94% using an OTP based on an Aadhaar), is good. By the end of July 2023, more than 3.44 crore ITRs for the tax year 2023–24 had been processed (61% of the total).

Further, a new e-pay tax payment platform TIN 2.0 was made available on the e-filing portal, replacing the earlier Protean (NSDL) based OLTAS payment system. This enabled provision of more user-friendly options for e-payment of taxes and making available more number of options for mode of payments such as Internet Banking, NEFT/RTGS, OTC, Debit Card, payment gateway and UPI. TIN 2.0 platform has enabled real time credit of taxes to taxpayers which made ITR filing easier and faster. Over 1.26 crore challans have been received through TIN 2.0 payment system in the month of July, 2023 itself, while total challans filed through TIN 2.0 since 1^st April, 2023 stands at 3.56 crore.

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In July 2023, the e-filing Helpdesk team responded to around 5 lakh taxpayer inquiries, actively assisting taxpayers during the busiest filing season. Taxpayers received assistance from the helpdesk through inbound and outbound calls, live chats, Webex meetings, and co-browsing sessions. By proactive outreach to taxpayers and stakeholders and providing them with support for various difficulties on a nearly real-time basis, the helpdesk team assisted settlement of inquiries received on the Department’s Twitter handle through Online Response Management (ORM).

The Department acknowledges the help in submitting documents on time, and it asks all taxpayers to check their ITRs within 30 days of filing. Additionally, the Department encourages taxpayers who for any reason missed the deadline to finish filing right away.