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Journalism of Courage
Income tax e-filings in 2018-19 dropped by more than 6.6 lakh, statistics put out on the Income Tax Department’s e-filing website show. Tax return forms for 2019-20 have been notified, with July 31 as the deadline for filing.
In 2018-19, the number of returns e-filed was 6.68 crore, down from 6.74 crore in the 2017-18, after a jump from 5.28 crore in 2016-17.
The drop in e-filings comes at a time when the number of registered filers have risen. This count was 8.45 crore as of March 31, 2019, which was 15% more than the 7.36 crore on March 31, 2018. From the same date in 2013, when the count was 2.69 crore, the rise has been more than threefold in six years.
A PTI report on Sunday quoted from a Kotak Economic Research report on April 30, which said: “We are surprised with the decline in income tax e-filing in FY2019. If the filings are indeed plateauing, it will be a worry for the fiscal which has seemingly shifted its focus to compensatory expenditure. Tax filings have surprisingly plateaued in FY2019. This is surprising given that post demonetisation it was expected that the tax base would continue to increase.”
