Record 72.8 million ITRs filed till Jul 31 deadline, says I-T department

Over 72% chose new tax regime for assessment year 2024-25

A record 72.8 million income-tax returns (ITRs) --- 52.7 million did so in accordance with the new tax regime -- were filed for assessment year 2024-25 by July 31, the income-tax (I-T) department stated on Friday. 

Last year 67.7 million returns were filed during the period.

The new tax regime is the default one. If one does not have a business income, one is free to select any one of the two tax regimes.

To make the new regime attractive, the Budget on July 23 changed the income-tax slabs. The changes were mainly at the lower tax slabs, to benefit salaried classes.

 

The tax department has decided not to extend the deadline beyond July 31, for the third consecutive year.

An ITR filed after the deadline will be liable for a late fee of up to Rs 5,000. It will be Rs 1,000 for those with a taxable income up to Rs 5 lakh.

There have been 5.857 million ITRs from first-time filers, reflecting that the tax base is widening and compliance is becoming better, the department said. 

Filing peaked on July 31 (the due date for salaried taxpayers and other non-tax audit cases), with nearly seven million ITRs filed on that day. 

The platform 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, and ITR-6) were made available on the e-filing portal on April 1, 2024, the start of the financial year. ITR-3 and ITR-5 were released earlier in comparison with the 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 one-time passwords (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 9.194 million challans received in July 2024 for AY2024-25, contributing to 16.4 million challans since April 1, 2024. 

The e-filing Helpdesk handled approximately 1.064 million queries from taxpayers.

The team managed over 107,000 emails from April 1 to July 31, resolving 99.97 per cent of the queries. 

“Focussed outreach campaigns were carried out on social media to encourage the taxpayers to file their ITRs early. Along with this, unique creative campaigns were also carried out on different platforms,” the department noted.