About 5.89 crore Income Tax Returns (ITRs) have been filed on the new e-filing portal of the Income Tax Department as on 31st December, 2021, the extended due date for filing returns. More than 46.11 lakh ITRs were filed on the last day of the year alone, an official release said.

Out of the total, ITRs filed for assessment year (AY) 2021-22 as on 31st December, 49.6 per cent or 2.92 crore filers can be classified under ITR1, which implies that the majority have derived income from salary, rent, and interest.

In comparison, as on January 10, 2021, (the extended due date for ITRs for AY 2020-21), the total number of ITRs filed was 5.95 crore. As many as 31.05 lakh ITRs filed were on the last day or January 10, 2021.

There are several classifications of the ITR depending on the sources of income.

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The Income Tax department has notified seven various forms i.e. ITR 1, ITR 2, ITR 3, ITR 4, ITR 5, ITR 6 and ITR 7 until now. Cleartax, a portal specializing in tax related issues underlined the need for every taxpayer to file his or her ITR on or before the specified due date.

The applicability of ITR forms will depend on the sources of income of the taxpayer like individuals, Hindu Undivided Family, company among others.

As many as 9.3 per cent are related to ITR2 or 54.8 lakh filers, 12.1 per cent are ITR3 — 71.05 lakh, 27.2 per cent are ITR4 — 1.60 crore, 1.3 per cent are ITR5 — 7.66 lakh, ITR6 –2.58 lakh and ITR7 0.67 lakh.

The government statement added that more than 45.7 per cent of these ITRs have been filed using the online form on the portal and the balance have been uploaded using the ITR created from the offline software utilities.