More than 3 crore ITRs filed on new e-Filing portal of Income Tax Department

As of December 3rd, 2021, more than 3 crore Income Tax Returns had been filed on the Income Tax Department’s new e-Filing portal. The number of ITRs filed per day exceeds 4 lakh and continues to rise as the extended due date of December 31, 2021 approaches.

The Income Tax Department strongly advises all taxpayers to view their Form 26AS and Annual Information Statement (AIS) via the e-filing portal to ensure the accuracy of TDS and Tax Payments and to take advantage of pre-filling of ITRs. It is critical for taxpayers to cross-check the data in the AIS statement with their bank passbook, interest certificate, Form 16, and capital gains statement from brokerages in the case of equity/mutual fund purchases and sales, among other things.

Income Tax Return (ITR) filing has increased to 3.03 crore ITRs for AY 2021-22, with ITR1 (1.78 crore) accounting for 58.98%, ITR2 (24.42 lakh), ITR3 (26.58 lakh) accounting for 8.7 percent, ITR4 (70.07 lakh), ITR5 (2.14 lakh), ITR6 (0.91 lakh), and ITR7 accounting for 23.12 percent (0.15 lakh). Over 52% of these ITRs are filed using the portal’s online ITR form, with the remainder uploaded using ITRs generated by offline software utilities.

E-verification via Aadhaar OTP and other methods is required for the Department to begin processing the ITR and issue refunds, if any. It is encouraging to see that 2.69 crore returns have been e-verified, with over 2.28 crore using Aadhaar-based OTP.

In November, 48% of verified ITRs 1, 2, and 4 were processed on the same day. More than 2.11 crore ITRs have been processed, with over 82.80 lakh refunds issued for the fiscal year 2021-22. To avoid refund failures, taxpayers are urged to ensure that the bank account chosen for refund credit has their PAN number linked at the bank.

8.33 lakh DSCs have been registered in total. In the simplified DSC registration process, an individual only needs to register his DSC once and can use it across any entity where the individual is a partner, director, or other role without having to re-register against each entity or role.

Over 34.01 lakh Statutory Forms have been submitted, including 15.11 lakh TDS statements, 1.56 lakh Form 10A for trust/institutions registration, 3.29 lakh Form 10E for salary arrears, 49,295 Form 35 for filing an appeal, and 35,342 DTVSV Form 4 until December 3rd, 2021. Over 7.81 lakh 15CA and 1.82 lakh 15CB forms have been submitted. More than 29.54 lakh e-PANs have been distributed for free online. For registrations and compliance, the Legal Heir functionality has been enabled.

The Department has been sending out reminders to taxpayers via email, SMS, and media campaigns, encouraging them to file their Income Tax Returns as soon as possible.

To avoid a last-minute rush, all taxpayers who have yet to file their Income Tax returns for AY 2021-22 are urged to do so as soon as possible.