ITR filing: The Income-tax Department on Friday said that record income tax returns (ITRs) were filed till the last day on July 31, 2024. It noted that the total number of ITRs for AY 2024-25 filed till 31st July, 2024, was more than 7.28 crore, which is 7.5% more than the total ITRs for AY 2023-24 (6.77 crore) filed till 31st July, 2023.
It further said that an increasing number of taxpayers have opted for the New Tax Regime this year. Of the total ITRs of 7.28 crore filed for AY 2024-25, 5.27 crore have been filed in the New Tax Regime compared to 2.01 crore ITRs filed in the Old Tax Regime. About 72% of taxpayers have opted for the New Tax Regime, while 28% continue to be in the Old Tax Regime.
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“The filing of ITRs peaked on 31st July, 2024 (due date for salaried taxpayers and other non-tax audit cases) with over 69.92 lakh ITRs being filed on a single day i.e. on 31st July, 2024. The e-filing portal also observed its highest per hour rate of 5.07 lakh of ITR filing between 07 pm to 08 pm on 31.07.2024. The highest per second rate of ITR filing was917 (17.07.2024, 08:13:54 am) and the highest per minute rate of ITR filing was 9,367 (31.07.2024, 08:08 pm),” the Income Tax department stated in its note.
AY | Due date | No of Returns filed |
2020-21 | 10/01/2021 | 5,78,45,678 |
2021-22 | 31/12/2021 | 5,77,39,682 |
2022-23 | 31/07/2022 | 5,82,88,692 |
2023-24 | 31/07/2023 | 6,77,42,303 |
2024-25 | 31/07/2024 | 7,28,80,318 |
The I-T department noted that it received 58.57 lakh ITRs till 31.07.2024 from first time filers that pointed at a widening of tax base.
For the first time, ITRs (ITR-1, ITR-2, ITR-4, ITR-6) were deployed on the e-filing portal on the first day of the Financial Year on April 1, 2024. The ITR-3 and ITR-5 were also released earlier in comparison with the preceding financial years. A lot of emphasis was placed to educate taxpayers about Old and New tax regimes. FAQs and educational Videos on the same were designed and uploaded on the e-filing portal.
Of the 7.28 crore ITRs filed for A.Y. 2024-25, 45.77% of ITRs are ITR-1 (3.34 crore), 14.93% are ITR-2 (1.09 crore), 12.50% are ITR-3 (91.10 lakh), 25.77% are ITR-4 (1.88 crore) and 1.03% are ITR-5 to ITR-7 (7.48 lakh).
Over 43.82% of these ITRs have been filed using the online ITR utility available on the e-filing portal and the balance has been filed using offline ITR utilities.
During the peak filing period, the e-filing portal successfully handled huge traffic, providing a seamless experience to taxpayers for filing of ITRs. On 31st July, 2024 alone, successful logins stood at 3.2 crore.
E-verification
The department noted that over 6.21 crore ITRs have been e-verified, of which more than 5.81 crore are through Aadhaar-based OTP (93.56%). Of the e-verified ITRs, more than 2.69 crore ITRs for the A.Y. 2024-2025 have been processed (43.34%) till July 31, 2024. Over 91.94 lakh challans have been received through TIN 2.0 payment system in the month of July 2024 (for AY 2024-25), while the total number of challans filed through TIN 2.0 since 1st April, 2024 stands at 1.64 crore (for AY 2024-25).
Queries and complaints
The e-filing Helpdesk team has handled approximately 10.64lakh queries from taxpayers during the year upto 31.07.2024, supporting the taxpayers proactively during the peak filing period. Support from the helpdesk was provided to taxpayers through inbound and outbound calls, live chats, WebEx and co-browsing sessions.
Helpdesk team also supported resolution of queries received on the X (Twitter) handle of the Department through Online Response Management (ORM), by proactively reaching out to the taxpayers/ stakeholders and assisting them for different issues on a near real-time basis. The team handled over 1.07 lakh e-mails between the period 1st April to 31st July, 2024 and successfully resolved 99.97% queries.