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CBDT chairperson Nitin Gupta has said that more than four crore income tax returns (ITRs) for the financial year 2022-23 have been filed so far and about 7 per cent of these are new or first-time filers. He said that more than half of these ITRs have been processed leading to 80 lakh refunds till now. He said ‘the shortage of manpower at every level was impeding our efforts to give even better results’. He urged Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for a ‘quick approval’ of the department's cadre restructuring proposal.

The CBDT chairperson said direct tax collection, which includes personal income tax and corporate tax among others, has been making remarkable strides as the department collected more than Rs 16.61 lakh crore in taxes during the 2022-23 fiscal which was 17.67 per cent higher than the preceding year. This collection surpassed both the budget and revised estimates set by the government for revenue collections under the direct taxes category and is a testament to the hard work of the cadre.

Gupta said the department was working on the guidelines set by the finance minister of ensuring ‘quicker processing of returns and speedy issue of refunds’. He said ‘we have reduced ITR processing to just 16 days and more than 42 per cent of the ITRs were processed in one day during the last fiscal’. He said the tax authorities were ‘intensely monitoring’ the grievances of the taxpayers. To give a progressive tax administration, he said ‘not only do we need to augment our infrastructure but also human capital. The quick approval of our cadre restructuring will be a useful step to achieve this’.