ITR filing up 3% at 66.3 million till March 15
The income tax department on Wednesday said about 66.3 million income tax returns (ITRs) were e-filed as of March 15 for the assessment year 2021-22, nearly 3% more than a year ago.
On March 15, which was the due date for filing of ITRs by companies and other taxpayers who were required to file tax audit reports, about 543,000 ITRs were filed, compared to 477,000 last year on the due date. Over 1.38 million ITRs were filed in the last five days compared to 1.18 million in the year-ago period.
Out of the 66.3 million ITRs filed for AY 2021-22, 46% are ITR-1 (30.3mn), 9% are ITR-2 (5.76 mn), 15% are ITR-3 (10.2 mn), 26% are ITR-4 (17.5 mn), 2% are ITR-5 (1.51 mn), ITR-6 (930,000) and ITR-7 (218,000).
The income tax (I-T) department also issued refunds of over Rs 1,92,119 crore to more than 2.24 crore taxpayers from April 1, 2021, to March 15, 2022. Income tax refunds of Rs 70,373 crore have been issued in 2,21,62,611 cases and corporate tax refunds of Rs 1,21,746 crore have been issued in 2,32,997cases. These refunds include 18.3 million refunds of AY 2021-22 amounting to Rs 37,961.19 crore, the Central Board of Direct Taxes said in a statement.
Further, out of the 66.3 million ITRs filed for AY 2021-22, more than 6.01 crore ITRs have been verified (75% using Aadhaar OTP). Out of the verified ITRs, more than 51.7 million ITRs have been processed.
Two email IDs were created to resolve the grievances of taxpayers in an expeditious manner related to uploading of ITRs: (itr.helpdesk@incometax.gov.in) and Tax Audit Report (TAR) (tar.helpdesk@incometax.gov.in).
In this regard, 16,252 emails were received, of which 16,233 were resolved by March 15, 2022. In addition to the above, the department has been proactively engaging with and reaching out to taxpayers and professionals for assistance through its official Twitter handle continuously and through direct Webex calls/webinars for better handholding.
Recently, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had asked the CBDT to reach out to taxpayers more regularly, and address their grievances in a time-bound manner.