Income Tax Return Filing: Over 4 crore ITRs filed for FY23 so far, 80 lakh refunds issued, says CBDT chairperson Nitin Gupta

Income Tax Return Filing: More than four crore income tax returns (ITRs) have been filed so far for fiscal 2022-23 and more than half of them have been processed leading to issuance of 80 lakh refunds, CBDT chairperson Nitin Gupta said on Monday.

Gupta also said that the "shortage of manpower (in the department) at every level was impeding our efforts to give even better results" as he urged the Union finance minister for a "quick approval" of the department's cadre restructuring proposal.

He was speaking at an event held here to mark the 164th Income Tax Day. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) is the administrative authority for the I-T department.

Gupta said the direct tax collection, that includes personal income tax and corporate tax among others, has been making "remarkable" strides as the department collected more than Rs 16.61 lakh crore in taxes during 2022-23 fiscal and this was 17.67 per cent higher as compared to the preceding year.

This collection "surpassed" both the budget and revised estimates set by the government for revenue collections under the direct taxes category and this is a testament of the hard work of our cadre, he said.

"We are currently growing at the rate of 16 per cent (for direct tax collection) over the last year. We had 7.78 crore income tax returns filed during 2022-23 financial year and this was an increase of 6.5 per cent over the previous year," the CBDT head said.

This year, till now, more than four crore ITRs have been filed already and this is four days earlier than the last time, he said. In the current year, over 50 per cent returns have been processed already and more than 80 lakh refunds have been issued, Gupta said. The deadline for filing ITRs for different categories of taxpayers is a week away at July 31.

He said the department was working on the guidelines set by the finance minister of ensuring "quicker processing of returns and speedy issue of refunds". We have reduced the ITR processing to just 16 days and more than 42 per cent of the ITRs were processed in one day during the last fiscal, he said.

The CBDT chairperson said the tax authorities were "intensely monitoring" the grievances of the taxpayers. Gupta sought Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's "indulgence" to address the "shortage of manpower at every level (of the department) which is impeding our efforts to given even better results" "...To give a progressive tax administration, not only we need to augment our infrastructure but also human capital. The quick approval of our cadre restructuring will be a useful step to achieve this," he said.

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