ITR filings reaches record high of 6.7 crore, jumps 16%: Income Tax Department

“Social media efforts as well as focused e-mail and SMS campaigns were launched to entice taxpayers to file their ITRs ahead of schedule. When compared to the same period the year before, taxpayers filed their ITRs for AY 2023–24 significantly sooner as a consequence of these coordinated efforts, the government said in a release.

The Income Tax Department reported on Tuesday that the overall number of income tax returns filed in the assessment year 2023–24 reached an all-time high of more than 6.77 crore, which is 16% more than the total number of returns filed in the prior assessment year, when 5.83 crore returns were filed. According to the department, it received 53.67 lakh ITRs from first-time filers, which shows that the tax base has grown.

On the final day of filing, July 31, more than 64.33 lakh ITRs were submitted in a single day, according to the Income Tax Department.

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“Social media efforts as well as focused e-mail and SMS campaigns were launched to entice taxpayers to file their ITRs ahead of schedule. When compared to the same period the year before, taxpayers filed their ITRs for AY 2023–24 significantly sooner as a consequence of these coordinated efforts, the government said in a release.

According to the income tax department, of the 6.77 crore ITRs filed for AY 2023–24, 49.18% are ITR-1s (3.33 crore), followed by ITR-2s (81.12 lakh), ITR-3s (75.40 lakh), ITR-4s (1.81 crore), ITR-5s (6.40 lakh), and ITR-7s (0.94%).

More than 46% of these returns, according to the statement, were submitted online using the ITR utility on the e-filing portal, and the other 34% were submitted using offline ITR utilities.

The department stressed the significance of using Aadhaar OTP and other forms of e-verification to process ITRs and award refunds. “It is good to see that 5.63 crore returns have been electronically verified, of which over 5.27 crore have done so (94%) using an OTP based on an Aadhaar. By the end of July 2023, more than 3.44 crore (61%) of the e-verified ITRs for the tax year 2023–24 had been completed, according to the department.