Demonetisation impact: Income tax return filings surge by 25%

Last year, around the same time, IT returns, excluding those filed by individuals manually were 2.26 crore.

The filing of income tax (IT) returns recorded a surge of 25 percent with about 2.82 crore people submitting their returns as on August 1 for the financial year 2016-17.

Last year, around the same time, IT returns, excluding those filed by individuals manually were 2.26 crore.

August 5 was the deadline for filing income tax return for financial year 2016-17.

The number of returns filed by individuals this fiscal rose by 25.3 per cent to 2.79 crore as against 2.22 crore last fiscal.

"This clearly shows that substantial number of new tax payers have been brought into the tax net subsequent to demonetisation," said the Finance Ministry on Monday.

The ministry further said that the effect of demonetisation was also visible in direct tax collections.

While the Income Tax department had launched Operaiton Clean Money to look into suspicious cash deposits during the note ban period, taxpayers also had to declare cash deposits of over Rs. 2 lakh in their bank accounts in the demonetisation window.

The government had also asked taxpayers to link Permanent Account Numbers with Aadhaar and quote the 12-digit biometric identity number in the income tax returns.

OneIndia News (with agency inputs)