New record of over 72.42 lakh ITRs filed on a single day

The Department expresses its gratitude to taxpayers and tax professionals for making compliances in time leading to a surge in filing of Income Tax Returns (ITRs) resulting in a new record of ITRs filed on a single day.

The surge of filing ITRs peaked on 31st July, 2022 (due date for salaried taxpayers and other non-tax audit cases) with over 72.42 lakh ITRs being filed on a single day i.e on 31st July,2022. The total ITRs filed till 31st July, 2022 for AY 22-23 is about 5.83 crore. The e-filing portal also set other benchmarks on 31st July, 2022 including – highest per second rate of ITR filing: 570 (at 4:29:30 pm), highest per minute rate of ITR filing: 9573 (at 7:44 pm), and the highest per hour rate of ITR filing: 5,17,030, between 5 PM to 6 PM.

The first 1 crore ITRs for AY 22–23 were only submitted on July 7, 2022, demonstrating how much slower the early pace of e-filing was. By the 22nd of July 2022, there were 2.48 crore ITRs filed, a little increase in the rate. The government’s announcement that there would be no deadline extension caused a boom in ITR filing; by July 25, 2022, 3 crore ITRs had been submitted. On July 31, 2022, 72.42 lakh ITRs had been submitted by day’s end, breaking all prior records (maximum being 49 lakh ITRs in 2019). More than 5.13 Crore ITRs have been filed in July 2022 alone.

Out of 5.83 crore ITRs filed for AY 2022-23, 50% of these are ITR-1 (2.93 crore), 11.5% are ITR-2 (67 lakh), 10.9% are ITR-3 (63.35 lakh), 26% are ITR-4 (1.54 crore), ITR-5 to 7 (5.5 lakh). The number of ITRs filed during working hours (9 AM-6 PM) since 7th July, 2022 to 31st July, 2022 is around 3.31 crore, which is 58.77% of the total ITRs filed. Over 47% of these ITRs have been filed using the online ITR form on the portal and the balance have been uploaded using the ITR created from the offline software utilities.

Many taxpayers checked their financial records by comparing the information on their Annual Information Statements (AIS) and Taxpayer Information Summaries (TIS). More than 5.03 crore taxpayers saw or downloaded their AIS, which indicates a strong consumption rate for AIS/TIS data.

This year, a sizable portion of the ITR-1’s data was already prefilled with information about salary, interest, and dividend income, making it simpler for taxpayers to comply. Apart from this information, property details for rental income, brought forward losses, and MAT credit were also pre-filled for other ITRs 2, 3, and 4 to make compliance more easier for taxpayers.

For the Department to start processing the ITR and to provide refunds, if any, the procedure of e-verification by Aadhaar OTP and other ways is crucial. It is gratifying to learn that 3.96 crore returns have undergone electronic verification, more than 3.71 crore of which used an OTP based on Aadhaar (94 percent). More than 3.01 crore ITRs for AY 2022–23 have been processed from the e-verified ITRs (75 percent). In a number of cases, taxpayers have received their processing notifications minutes or hours after filing and verifying their ITRs.

Additionally, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Federal Bank have implemented the new tax payment option (TIN 2.0) on the e-filing platform. Till July 31st, 2022, these banks had received around 73,910 challans totaling Rs. 518.5 crore.

Up to July 31st of 2022, the e-filing Helpdesk team assisted with and answered more than 1.45 lakh inquiries. A total of 1,05,800 calls were answered in the final week of July 2022, with the most calls (18,341) coming in on the 26th. Helpdesk team also assisted in resolving complaints made via the Department’s Twitter account by proactively contacting taxpayers and stakeholders and resolving any issues almost immediately.