IMPORTANT! CBDT clarification against Income Tax misinformation - Top things to know

The Income Tax department through its Twitter handle @IncomeTaxIndia has posted about a  clarification issued by CBDT with respect to certain misinformation which is being circulated in social media pertaining to individual tax filers. Here is what Income Tax dept said - Top points to know:

Income Tax dept said, "Certain misinformation is being circulated in Social Media pertaining to individual return filers." 

CBDT clarifies:

-During the current financial year, 5.78 crore individuals filed returns disclosing income of financial year 2018-19

-Out of these,1.03 crore individuals have shown income below Rs 2.5 lakh & 3.29 crore individuals disclosed taxable income between Rs.2.5 lakh to Rs.5 lakh.

-Out of 5.78 crore returns filed during this financial year, 4.32 crore individuals have disclosed income upto Rs 5 lakh.

-The Finance Act, 2019 has exempted individual tax payers having income up to Rs 5 lakh.

-Therefore, these 4.32 crore individual tax payers having income up to Rs 5 lakh shall not be liable to pay tax for the current financial year 2019-20 and subsequent years.

-Hence, only around 1.46 crore individual tax payers are liable to pay income-tax.

-Further, around 1 crore individuals disclosed income between Rs. 5-10 lakh and only 46 lakh individual tax payers have disclosed income above Rs 10 lakh

-Only 3.16 lakh individual tax payers have disclosed income above Rs 50 lakh.

-The number of individual tax payers who have disclosed income above Rs 5 crore in the whole of the country is only around 8,600

-In the ITRs filed by individuals in current financial year, only about 2200 Doctors, Chartered Accountants, Lawyers & such other professionals have disclosed annual income of more than Rs 1 crore from their profession (excluding other incomes like rental, interest, capital gains etc)

Recently, to help taxpayers make the right decision, the Income Tax Department launched an e-calculator for individuals to estimate and compare their tax liability under the new tax slabs as compared to the existing regime.

The calculator has been updated by the department to make it more user friendly. It largely gives the user three broad results based on the kind of individual financial data fed into it.

It will either tell the user about the tax benefit as per the new regime (as proposed in the budget), tax benefit as per the existing or old system and lastly if tax outflow for the user is same in both old and new regime.

This will help individuals take an informed decision while opting for the right tax slab before filing their income tax return (ITR) next year.