A total of 7.28 crore ITRs (income tax returns) for the assessment year 2024-25 were filed till the ITR deadline of July 31, 2024. This is 7.5 per cent more than the total ITRs of 6.77 crore recorded a year ago, the finance minister said in a statement on Friday. It added that nearly 72 per cent of taxpayers opted for the new tax regime this year.
“The taxpayers and tax professionals made their compliances in time, leading to a surge in filing of income tax returns (ITRs), which resulted in a new record of ITRs filed till July 31, 2024. The total number of ITRs for AY 2024-25 filed till July 31, 2024, is more than 7.28 crore, which is 7.5 per cent more than the total ITRs for AY 2023-24 (6.77 crore) filed till July 31, 2023,” the ministry stated.
According to the official statement, 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. Thus, about 72 per cent of taxpayers have opted for the new tax regime, while 28% continue to be in the old tax regime,” the ministry said.
The filing of ITRs peaked on July 31, 2024 (due date for salaried taxpayers and other non-tax audit cases) with over 69.92 lakh ITRs being filed on a single day i.e. on 31st July, 2024. The e-filing portal also observed its highest per hour rate of 5.07 lakh of ITR filing between 07:00 pm to 08:00 pm on 31.07.2024. The highest per second rate of ITR filing was 917 (17.07.2024, 08:13:54 am) and the highest per minute rate of ITR filing was 9,367 (31.07.2024, 08:08 pm).
The Department also received 58.57 lakh ITRs till 31.07.2024 from first time filers, a fair indication of the widening of tax base.
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 ie on April 1, 2024, according to the statement.
“The ITR-3 and ITR-5 were also released earlier in comparison with the preceding financial years. A lot of emphasis was provided to educate taxpayers about Old and New tax regimes. FAQs and educational Videos on the same were designed and uploaded on the e-filing portal,” it said.
Out of the 7.28 crore ITRs filed for A.Y. 2024-25, 45.77% of ITRs are ITR-1 (3.34 crore), 14.93% are ITR-2 (1.09 crore), 12.50% are ITR-3 (91.10 lakh), 25.77% are ITR-4 (1.88 crore) and 1.03% are ITR-5 to ITR-7 (7.48 lakh). Over 43.82% of these ITRs have been filed using the online ITR utility available on the e-filing portal and the balance have been filed using offline ITR utilities.
During the peak filing period, the e-filing portal successfully handled huge traffic, providing a seamless experience to taxpayers for filing of ITRs. On July 31, 2024, alone, successful logins stood at 3.2 crore.
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