ClearTax expects 40 lakh ITRs to be filed through its portal this fiscal

With increased government focus on tax compliance, ClearTax Sunday said it expects at least 40 lakh filings through its online returns filing portal during the current fiscal ending March 2019.

As many as 30 lakh income tax returns have been filed through the ClearTax portal till August 31 -- the last date for filing ITRs for financial year 2017-18 by salaried individuals and entities under the presumptive tax scheme, ClearTax Founder Archit Gupta said.

This represented a growth of around 95 per cent over the 16 lakh returns filed through the portal last year.

"With the government focus on compliance, we hope that we will end this year with 40 lakh I-T returns filed by salaried class, entities under presumptive income scheme and also businesses who have to submit tax audit report, through ClearTax portal," Gupta told PTI.

As per income tax department data, I-T returns filing surged 71 per cent to 5.42 crore till August 31.

This was led by a massive eight-fold jump in returns filed by entities under the presumptive tax scheme and 54 per cent increase in e-filing by salaried individuals.

Almost 34.95 lakh returns were e-filed on August 31, 2018 -- the last date for filing ITRs for certain taxpayers.

Gupta said of the total 34 lakh returns filed on August 31, around 3 lakh filings happened through the ClearTax platform.

He said since the launch of Goods and Services Tax (GST), the number of Chartered Accountancy (CA) firms using the ClearTax platform too has gone up.

"Currently over 33,000 CA firms are using the platform and we hope to scale it up to around 45,000 by March end," Gupta said.

To cope with increased usage of the portal, ClearTax is looking to hire CAs, engineers and sales staff.

"Also we plan to expand our footprints to 6-7 more cities, including Surat, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Hyderabad," Gupta said.

ClearTax is currently present in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.

On fund raising plans, Gupta said: "We are currently well funded with USD 15 million of capital and we may evaluate further capital raising plans only around March 2019.