Income tax update facility fetches govt ₹8,350-cr revenue

A recently introduced facility that allows income-tax assessees to correct past mistakes in computing tax without any hassle, has seen 8.35 million taxpayers update their returns, and earned the exchequer about ₹8,350 crore additional revenue since FY23, according to government data.

- Saubhadra Chatterji & Rajeev Jayaswal

The updated return facility, announced in the budget for 2022-23, helped the income-tax department use digital infrastructure and nudge those taxpayers who were suspected to have made wrong claims of deductions and exemptions in their income-tax returns (ITRS), encouraging them to pay the correct amount after updating their ITRS, a government official said.

According to government data submitted to the standing committee on finance, over 2.16 million ITR-filers availed this facility in 2022-23, resulting into additional revenues of ₹2,063.32 crore. In the following year (2023-24) this number doubled to 4.1 million, generating more than 4,559.22 crore revenue.