Only 1,648 tax payers showed Rs 5 cr income in FY16

New Delhi: Even though the number of billionaires has increased manifold, the income tax (I-T) returns filed by tax payers for salary income over Rs 5 crore are just a handful in the country of over 120 crore people. There are only 1,648 taxpayers who have reported a salary income above Rs 5 crore in the assessment year (AY) 2015-16.

According to the income tax returns statistics for the assessment year 2015-16 released by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), the number of tax payers earning over Rs 1 crore increased over 23.5 per cent to 59,830 during the assessment year 2015-16, but this larger number of individuals in this category showed Rs 50,889 crore less aggregate income than in the previous year.

Surprisingly, as many as 4.07 crore individuals filed income tax returns in AY 2015-16, of whom around 82 lakh showed zero income or less than Rs 2.5 lakh, which is not liable to tax. The data released by the CBDT is of 2015-16, which is prior to the launch of the demonetisation and GST schemes.

When income tax returns statistics for the year 2016-17 would be released in September 2018, the country would witness a huge increase in the number of taxpayers, said a senior official. The CBDT data further stated that during AY 2014-15, the number of individuals with gross income of over Rs 1 crore was 48,417 with a cumulative income of Rs 2.05 lakh crore.

The combined income of all individual assessees rose to Rs 21.27 lakh crore in AY 2015-16 from Rs 18.41 lakh crore in the previous year. The Rs 2.5 lakh-3.5 lakh income category had the largest number of 1.33 crore individuals during AY 2015-16.

There were 55,331 persons with income between Rs 1 crore and Rs 5 crore during the latest assessment year for which figures have been released. while there were 3,020 individuals with income between Rs 5 crore and Rs 10 crore.

A total of 1,156 individuals had income between Rs 10 crore and Rs 25 crore in AY 2015-16. The number of individuals in the Rs 100-500 crore group rose to 31 from 17 in AY 2014-15.

The CBDT data also show that as many as 4.35 crore income tax returns, including those by corporates, were filed in AY 2015-16 with total declared income of Rs 33.62 lakh crore.