Over 8.22 Crore Taxpayers in Financial Year 2020 says FM Nirmala Sitharaman

In 2019-20, India had 8.22 crore taxpayers, including individuals and corporations, according to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s report to the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday. “The total number of taxpayers for the financial year 2020-21 is 8,22,83,407. The country’s projected total population as of March 1, 2021…. was 136.30 crore “Sitharaman explained.

The number of taxpayers includes individuals who pay income tax and corporate tax and have either filed a Return of Income or had tax deducted at source.

Sitharaman also stated that the government has implemented the non-filers monitoring system (NMS), which assimilates and analyses in-house information as well as transactional data received from third-parties in order to identify individuals/entities who have engaged in high-value financial transactions with potential tax liabilities but have not filed their returns.

“The (tax) department seeks to bring more non-filers into the tax net by formulating region-specific strategies by the field authorities for identifying potential non-filers, holding of outreach programmes to encourage voluntary compliance and extensive use of mass media for creating awareness, issuing statutory notices to enforce compliance, simplification in income-tax returns and filing process to encourage voluntary filing,” she said.

Additionally, taxpayers are sent e-mail and SMS reminders to file ITRs and pay their taxes.