ITR filings cross 2 crore on new portal; Technical glitches to come down

On Thursday, the income tax department said that the new I-T portal has substantially stabilised, while adding that more than two crore ITRs have been filed so far. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said all ITRs have been made available for e-filing and asked tax payers to file their Income Tax Returns (ITRs) for fiscal 2020-21 (April 2020-March 2021) at the earliest. It also said in a statement that ITRs 1 and 4 constitute 86%, and added that more than 1.70 crore returns were e-verified, of which 1.49 crore are through Aadhaar based OTP, which is encouraging.

This is due to the fact that the process of e-verification through Aadhaar OTP and other methods is important for the department to begin the ITR processing and issue refunds if any.

E-proceedings and faceless proceedings have been enabled

Over 1.06 crore ITRs have been processed and more than 36.22 lakh refunds for the Assessment Year (AY) 2021-22 have been issued, of the verified ITRs 1 and 4. Also, until October 13 over 13.44 crore unique taxpayers have logged in and about 54.70 lakh taxpayers have availed the facility of forgot password facility to obtain their passwords.

E-proceedings and faceless proceedings have been enabled with functionalities including video conferencing for assessment and seeking adjournements or appointment and filings by authorized representatives.

It added that, taxpayers have been able to view over 12.20 lakh notices issued by the department under the faceless assessment/appeal/penalty proceedings, to which over 6.24 lakh responses have been filed. The overall 4.87 lakh Digital Signature Certificates (DSCs) registrations, signalling the DSC registration of non-residents.

More than 15.72 lakh statutory forms have been submitted, which comprises 9.08 lakh TDS statements, 1.29 lakh Form 10A for registration of trusts and institutions, and 22,705 Vivad se Vishwas forms until October 13.

Along with the enabling of legal heir functionality for registrations and compliance, more than 1.83 lakh 15 CA and 37,870 15CB forms related to foreign remittances have been filed and more than 21.40 lakh e-PANs have been allotted online free of cost.

Launched on June 7, the new portal had reported glitches and difficulties in the functioning in the initial period.