The Union finance ministry on Sunday said more than three crore income tax returns have been filed for the 2020-21 financial year so far and advised taxpayers who have yet to file their return to do so at the earliest.

The number of ITRs filed per day is over four lakh and rising as the extended deadline of December 31 is approaching, an official statement said.

"The income tax department strongly urges all taxpayers to view their Form 26AS and Annual Information Statement (AIS) through the e-filing portal to verify the accuracy of the TDS and tax payments and avail of pre-filling of ITRs," it said. It is important for taxpayers to cross-check the data in the AIS statement with their bank passbook, interest certificate, Form 16 and capital gains statement from brokerages in case of purchase and sale of equity/ mutual funds, etc, it said.

"Income tax return (ITR) filing has increased to 3.03 crore ITRs for AY 2021-22. As much as 58.98 per cent of these are ITR1 (1.78 crore), 8 percent is ITR2 (24.42 lakh), 8.7 percent is ITR3 (26.58 lakh), 23.12 percent is ITR4 (70.07 lakh), ITR5 (2.14 lakh), ITR6 (0.91 lakh) and ITR7 (0.15 lakh). "Over 52 percent of these ITRs are filed using the online ITR form on the portal and the balance are uploaded using the ITR created from the offline software utilities," it said.

The process of e-verification through Aadhaar OTP and other methods is important for the income tax department to commence processing of the ITR and to issue refunds, if any. It is encouraging to note that 2.69 crore returns have been e-verified, of which more than 2.28 crore are through Aadhaar-based OTP, it said.

"In November, 48 per cent of verified ITRs 1, 2 and 4 have been processed on the same day. Of the verified ITRs, more than 2.11 crore have been processed and over 82.80 lakh refunds for AY 2021-22 have been issued," it said. Taxpayers are urged to ensure that the bank account selected for credit of refund must have their PAN number linked to avoid refund failures, it added.

"Overall 8.33 lakh digital signature certificates (DSCs) have been registered. In the simplified process of DSC registration, any individual has to register his DSC only once and can use it across any entity where the individual is a partner, director, etc, without having to re-register against each entity or role," it said.

First Published:Dec 5, 2021 3:53 PM IST