The commencement of Assessment Year 2024-25 (Financial Year 2023-24) has witnessed a remarkable surge in early tax return filings, with around 23,000 taxpayers having already submitted their income tax returns within the initial three days. This notable uptick follows the pioneering move by the Income Tax Department, which, for the first time, introduced return filing utilities on its portal from the very first day of the assessment year, starting April 1, 2024.
Contrasting the previous year’s timeline, where returns became available for filing in May, this proactive approach by the department to make filing functionalities accessible from the outset has evidently encouraged swift compliance among taxpayers. Last year, filing utilities were accessible from May 20, 2023, for salaried individuals (ITR-1) and entities with income from business or profession (ITR-4), with the utility for other income categories being available from May 30 onwards.
The Income Tax Department, operating under the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), has operationalized filing functionalities for commonly used segments such as ITR-1, ITR-2, and ITR-4. Taxpayers can now file their returns using these utilities, with the department also announcing the availability of ITR-6 for companies from April 1 onwards.
According to data provided by the tax department, as of April 3, a total of 22,599 returns have been filed for AY 2024-25, out of which 20,868 have been verified and 2,907 verified returns have already been processed. Despite this early momentum, tax experts have raised concerns regarding the Annual Information Statement (AIS) and Form 26AS, which are not updated until March 31, 2024.
Experts caution taxpayers to await the generation of AIS and Form 26AS before finalizing their returns to mitigate potential discrepancies in filings. The Annual Information Statement, a synopsis of a taxpayer’s financial transactions presented in Form 26AS, includes crucial details such as Tax Deducted or Collected at Source (TDS/TCS) and other financial transactions. Failure to verify AIS/Form 26AS before filing could lead to inadvertent errors and subsequent notices for incorrect income reporting.
