Ministry of Finance: More Than 3.59 Cr ITRs Have Been Filed On The New e-filing Portal

According to the Ministry of Finance, 3.59 crore Income Tax Returns (ITRs) were filed via the new e-filing portal of the Income Tax Department as of December 15, 2021. As the extended due date of December 31, 2021 approaches, the number of ITRs submitted per day has surpassed 6 lakh and is climbing every day. The Income Tax Department declared in a tweet that "More than 3.59 crore Income Tax Returns filed on the new e-filing portal of Income Tax Dept till 15th December 2021. More than 6 lakh ITRs are being filed per day & increasing daily. Secretary, Revenue & Chairman, CBDT held a meeting with Infosys today on the preparedness of e-filing website."

According to an official statement of Ministry of Finance "Out of the 3.59 crore ITRs filed for AY 2021-22, 57.6% are ITR1 (2.07 crore), 8.3% is ITR2 (29.70 lakh), 9.4% is ITR3 (33.61 lakh), 23.4% are ITR4 (84.05 lakh), ITR5 (3.12 lakh), ITR6 (1.33 lakh) and ITR7 (0.24 lakh). Nearly 52% of these ITRs have been filed using the online ITR form on the portal and the balance has been uploaded using the ITR created from the offline software utilities. It is encouraging to note that 3.11 crore returns have been e-verified, out of which more than 2.69 crores are through Aadhaar based OTP. The process of e-verification through Aadhaar OTP and other methods is important for the Department to commence processing of the ITR and to issue refunds if any."

The ministry has also claimed that "Of the e-verified ITRs more than 2.38 crore ITRs have been processed and over 90.95 crore refunds for AY 2021-22 have been issued. Taxpayers are requested to ensure that the bank account selected for credit or refund must have their PAN linked at the bank to avoid refund failures. Overall 9.83 lakh DSCs have been registered. In the simplified process of DSC registration, any individual has to register his DSC only once and can use it across any entity where the individual is a partner, director, etc without having to re-register again against each entity or role."

Till December 15, 2021, around 37.92 lakh Statutory Forms have been filed, including 15.30 lakh TDS statements, 1.61 lakh Form 10A for trusts/institutions registration, 3.90 lakh Form 10E for salary arrears, 51,302 Form 35 for filing an appeal, and 35,741 DTVSV Form 4. There have been more than 8.88 lakh Form 15CA, 2.18 lakh Form 15CB, 26,753 Form 3CA, and 2.67 lakh Form 3CB submitted. More than 32.13 lakh e-PANs have been issued for free over the internet. For registrations and compliance, the Legal Heir option has been implemented, according to the ministry.

The Finance Ministry has also said in the statement that "The Department has been issuing reminders to taxpayers through emails, SMS and media campaigns encouraging taxpayers to not wait till the last minute and file their Income Tax Returns without further delay. The Directorate of Systems is organizing webinars for frontline officials of the department (ASK Centres and TPS) to assist taxpayers in e-filing of ITRs. The Directorate of Systems along with Infosys personnel are also engaging through the ICAI platform to raise awareness about the resolution of problems faced in the process of e-filing. Educational Videos have been released on the YouTube handle of ITD for the guidance of taxpayers."

On 16.12.2021, the Ministry of Finance's senior officials, chaired by the Secretary of Revenue, convened with the Infosys team, chaired by Shri Salil Parekh, MD & CEO, Infosys, to discuss the readiness of the e-filing portal during optimum filing time. The actions taken in this respect, according to Infosys, include upgrading the technological infrastructure and establishing a dedicated war room to oversee the portal's functionality. Infosys, for its part, stated that it is ready to provide a seamless filing process in order to reassure taxpayers.

The Income Tax Department actively advises all taxpayers to double-check their Form 26AS and Annual Information Statement (AIS) through the e-filing portal in order to verify the correctness of TDS and Tax Payments and to take advantage of ITR pre-filling. In the event of purchasing and selling of equity/mutual funds, taxpayers should double-check the details in the AIS statement with their bank passbook, interest certificate, Form 16 and capital gains statement from brokerage firms. All taxpayers who have not yet filed their income tax returns for the fiscal year 2021-22 are advised to do so as soon as possible.