The number of Income Tax Returns (ITRs) filed by the July 31 deadline touched a new high of 6.77 crore this year, 16.1% higher than a year ago, with 53.67 lakh taxpayers filing returns for the first time.
A little less than 10% of all return filings took place on July 31, the last date for filing without penal levies, as per data from the Income Tax Department, which said the high number of first-time ITR filers was “a fair indication of widening of tax base”.
As of July 30, 6 crore ITRs had been filed, which was already higher than the 5.83 crore filed by July 31 last year. “The filing of ITRs peaked on 31st July, 2023 (due date for salaried taxpayers and other non-tax audit cases) with over 64.33 lakh ITRs being filed on a single day,” the department said.
Over 46% of all ITRs were filed using the e-filing portal while the rest relied on offline utilities. “The e-filing portal observed its highest per hour rate of 4,96,559 ITR filings between 5 PM to 6 PM on 31st July, 2023, with the highest per second rate of ITR filing of 486 (at 16:35:06 hours) and highest per minute rate of ITR filing of 8,622 (at 17:54 hours),” a statement said.
Indicating that the Income Tax portal is now stable after glitches experienced last year, the IT department said the e-filing portal, successfully handled huge traffic during the peak filing period. Through July, there were more than 32 crore successful logins on the e-filing portal, with the last date of the month clocking 2.74 crore logins.
5.63 crore returns have already been e-verified, of which more than 5.27 crore relied on Aadhaar- based one-time passwords or OTPs. Of the e-verified ITRs, more than 3.44 crore or 61% of the ITRs had been processed by Monday.
The IT Department has requested all taxpayers to verify their ITRs within 30 days of filing returns. The Department also urged taxpayers, “who for any reason, missed the due date, to complete their filing immediately”.
