New Delhi, Aug 2 (UNI) More than 7.28 crore income tax returns (ITRs) were filed for assessment year (AY) 2024-25 as on July 31, 2024 thus registering a growth of 7.5% over 6.77 crore returns filed last year till the July-end deadline.
The Income Tax Department received 58.57 lakh ITRs from first time filers this year till the July 31st deadline, an indication of widening tax base.
Out of the total returns filed by non-audit taxpayers, about 72% taxpayers opted for the new tax regime while the remaining 28% chose the old tax regime.
"An increasing number of taxpayers have opted for the new tax regime this year. Out of the total ITRs of 7.28 crore filed for AY 2024-25, 5.27 crore have been filed in the new tax regime compared to 2.01 crore ITRs filed in the old tax regime," Finance Ministry said in a statement on Friday releasing the latest data.
Over 6.21 crore ITRs have been e-verified, out of which more than 5.81 crore are through Aadhaar based OTP (93.56%). Of the e-verified ITRs, more than 2.69 crore ITRs for the AY 2024-2025 have been processed (43.34%) till 31st July, 2024.
The Finance Ministry noted that taxpayers and tax professionals made their compliances in time, leading to a surge in filing of ITRs.
The assessment year or AY comes after the financial year in which the income is earned.
As per official data, the filing of ITRs peaked on 31st July, 2024 (due date for salaried taxpayers and other non-tax audit cases) with over 69.92 lakh ITRs being filed. The e-filing portal observed its highest per hour rate of 5.07 lakh of ITR filing between 07:00 pm to 08:00 pm on July 31 this year.
"In a historic first, ITRs (ITR-1, ITR-2, ITR-4, ITR-6) were deployed on the e-filing portal on the first day of the Financial Year i.e. on 01.04.2024. The ITR-3 and ITR-5 were also released earlier in comparison with the preceding financial years," the official statement said.
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