Income Tax dept urges taxpayers to file returns for FY21 quickly

New Delhi: The income tax department on Thursday said more than two crore ITRs for the financial year 2020-21 have been filed so far and the performance of the new I-T portal has "substantially stabilised".

Asking taxpayers to file their income tax returns (ITRs) for fiscal 2020-21 (April 2020-March 2021) at the earliest, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said all ITRs have been made available for e-filing.

"More than two crore ITRs for AY 2021-22 been filed on the portal, of which ITRs 1 and 4 constitute 86 per cent. It is encouraging to note that more than 1.70 crore returns have been e-verified, out of which 1.49 crore are through Aadhaar based OTP," the CBDT said in a statement.

The process of e-verification through Aadhaar OTP and other methods is important for the department to commence processing of the ITR and to issue refunds, if any.

Of the verified ITRs 1 and 4, over 1.06 crore ITRs have been processed and over 36.22 lakh refunds for the assessment year (AY) 2021-22 have been issued. Processing of ITRs 2 and 3 will be taken up shortly, it said.

The new portal was launched on June 7 and in the initial period, taxpayers had reported glitches and difficulties in the functioning of the portal.

"A number of technical issues have since been resolved and the performance of the portal has substantially stabilised," the CBDT said, adding that over 13.44 crore unique taxpayers have logged in till October 13 and about 54.70 lakh taxpayers have availed of 'forgot password' facility to obtain their passwords.