7.8 mn new I-T assessees added in two years

Around 7.8 million new assessees started filing income tax returns between assessment years 2012-13 and 2014-15, pushing up the total number of filers to 39.13 million.

According to the Income Tax Return Statistics released by the Central Board of Direct Taxes, 31.2 million assessees filed returns in the assessment year 2012-13, which rose to 36 million in 2013-14 and 39.13 million the following year.

Most of these were individuals but there were also Hindu Undivided Family entities, firms, associations of persons, companies, limited liability partnerships, trusts, etc. There were 7.5 million more individual filers in 2014-15 than two years ago.

As many as 28.9 million individuals filed I-T returns during AY 2012-13, which went up to 33.5 million in AY 2013-14 and further to 36.5 million in AY 2014-15. Of the 36.5 million individuals who filed returns in AY 2014-15, 19.5 million individuals have shown nil salary income. The remaining 17 million individuals showed cumulative salary income of Rs 9.79 lakh crore. During AY 2013-14 and AY 2012-13, the cumulative salary income disclosed by individual taxpayers stood at Rs 8.33 lakh crore and Rs 6.26 lakh crore, respectively.

The data for AY 2014-15 showed that the bulk of the individual assessees or 3.54 million who filed tax returns earned annual salaries of Rs 5.50-9.50 lakh. As many as 3.1 million assessees with salary incomes of Rs 2.50-3.50 lakh filed returns during AY 2014-15. Assessees who reported salaries between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 1 crore were 54,921. There were 10 individuals who earned salary incomes in the range of Rs 50-100 crore, only two individuals have earned over Rs 100 crore. Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian said the release of I-T statistics data reflected the government's "continuing commitment to transparency".

Many economists, particularly Thomas Piketty, had asked the income-tax department to release tax statistics for various years, as this would help in comparative analysis.

The department had released the statistics for 2012-13, revised it and come out with the statistics for 2013-14 and 2014-15. The department had also come out with time series data from 2001-02 to 2015-16 assessment years and released some data for even 2016-17.