A record 72.8 million income tax returns (ITR) were filed for assessment year 2024-25 by July 31, the income tax department stated on Friday.
Of the total filings, 52.7 million have been filed under the new tax regime, compared to 20.1 million filed under the old tax regime. Last year, 67.7 million returns were filed during the same period.
The new tax regime is the default tax regime. If a person does not have any business income, they are free to select whichever tax regime during the financial year that best suits their needs.
To make it attractive, Budget 2024 has changed the income tax slabs under the new tax regime. The changes were mainly at the lower tax slab level of the income tax slabs, with an intent to benefit the salaried class.
The tax department has decided not to extend the deadline beyond July 31, for the third consecutive year. An ITR filed after deadline will be liable for late fee of up to Rs 5,000. A Rs 1000 applied to small taxpayers with taxable income up to Rs 5 lakh.
The department has witnessed 585,700 ITRs from first-time filers, reflecting the widening of the tax base and improved compliance, the department said.
The filing of ITRs peaked on July 31, 2024 (the due date for salaried taxpayers and other non-tax audit cases), with over 699,200 ITRs being filed on a single day.
The platform also recorded a peak rate of 917 filings per second on July 17 and 9,367 filings per minute on July 31.
For the first time, key ITR forms (ITR-1, ITR-2, ITR-4, ITR-6) were made available on the e-filing portal on April 1, 2024, the start of the financial year. The ITR-3 and ITR-5 were also released earlier in comparison with preceding financial years.
On July 31 alone, there were 32 million successful logins. Additionally, more than 62.1 million ITRs were e-verified, with over 58.1 million using Aadhaar-based OTPs, reflecting a 93.56 per cent adoption rate of this method.
Of the e-verified returns, 43.34 per cent (over 26.9 million) were processed by July 31.
The TIN 2.0 payment system also saw significant activity, with 919,400 challans received in July 2024 for AY 2024-25, contributing to a total of 16.4 million challans since April 1, 2024.
The e-filing Helpdesk handled approximately 1.064 million taxpayer queries, providing proactive support during peak periods.
The team also managed over 107,000 emails from April 1 to July 31, 2024, successfully resolving 99.97 per cent of queries.
“Focussed outreach campaigns were carried out on social media to encourage taxpayers to file their ITRs early. Along with this, unique creative campaigns were also carried out on different platforms,” the department noted.
First Published: Aug 02 2024 | 4:48 PM IS