Indians are taking to the digital world in a big way for more diverse reasons, which include filing their Income Tax Returns.
The last date for filing Income Tax Returns or ITR ended on August 31. The Income-Tax Department celebrated the fact that history of sorts was created with a quantum jump in the e-filing of ITR with an all time high record of 49,29,121 ITRs filed in a single day on August 31.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) claimed peak e-filing rate on August 31 per second was at 196 ITRs. This means almost 200 tax payers were filing their returns every second. Peak filing rate per minute was at 7,447 ITRs while peak filing rate per hour was at 3,87,571 ITRs.
The I-T Dept said that such huge e-filing of ITRs in a single day has not happened anywhere in the world and in the history of tax administration. To the credit of the I-T department, its portals withstood the onslaught of such a huge flow of traffic on a single day.
CBDT says that as per the data, at TRACES there were 42,75,913 views on Aug 31 as compared to highest of 29,94,406 of last year, almost 43% increase as compared to last year peak views. Making the portals work smoothly, claimed the department, was not easy.
The Information Security team of the department thwarted 2,205 malicious attacks on the website, aimed at disrupting services during the peak period. To ensure that the e-filers manage to meet the deadline for filing returns without hiccups, the department actively interacted with taxpayers on social media to help them resolve their grievances and efiling-related queries.
The CBDT on Sunday, while releasing the data on e-filing of ITRs, said, “Taxpayers are experiencing a whole new facet of the I-T department which is not only taxpayer-friendly but also a facilitator providing informational assistance with the prefilled forms and handholding efilers besides being proactively responsive on social media to help and guide taxpayers.”
Returns have been filed but it’s still work in progress for the CBDT which said that out of the 5.65 crore ITRs filed so far, 3.61 crore ITRs have already been verified. This year, about 2.86 crore (79%) taxpayers opted for everification, mostly using Aadhaar OTP. The department intends to carry out campaigns as well to increase awareness about e-verification of ITRs.
