New Delhi, March 25: Over nine million updated Income Tax Returns have been filed over the last four years, which helped the government raise an additional revenue of Rs 9,118 crore, reflecting the success of the voluntary compliance scheme introduced by the Government, Parliament was informed.
The government in 2022 had introduced the option for taxpayers to file updated I-T returns (ITR-U) up to two years from the relevant assessment year (AY) by paying additional income tax as part of a scheme to encourage voluntary compliance, Cumulatively, between AY 2021-22 to AY 2024-25, over 9.176 million ITR-Us were filed which fetched additional taxes of Rs 9,118 crore to the government, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.
In the current assessment year (2024-25) till February 28, around 464,000 updated ITRs have been filed and taxes of Rs 431.20 crore paid, the minister said. Through Finance Bill, 2025, the government has proposed to extend the time limit for filing updated returns to up to four years from the relevant assessment year.
The step has been taken in view of the success of the scheme. In AY 2023-24, over 2.979 million ITR-Us were filed and Rs 2,947 crore additional taxes were paid. In AY 2022-23 and AY 2021-22, 4.007 million and 1.724 million updated ITRs were filed and an additional Rs 3,940 crore and Rs 1,799.76 crore taxes were paid.
In answer to another question, the minister said the Union Cabinet has approved the ‘Incentive Scheme for Promotion of Low-Value BHIM-UPI Transactions (Person to Merchant – P2M)’ for the financial year 2024-25. This step supports the Government’s goal of boosting digital payments, encouraging small merchants to adopt UPI, and promoting financial inclusion.
The promotion of digital payments is an integral part of the Government’s strategy for financial inclusion and providing wide-ranging payment options to the common man. The expenditure incurred by the digital payment industry for providing services to customers/merchants is recovered through the Merchant Discount Rate (MDR).
The merchant discount rate is a fee that merchants and other businesses must pay to a payment processing company on debit or credit card transactions. The MDR typically comes in the form of a percentage of the transaction amount, the minister said.
As per RBI, MDR of up to 0.90 per cent of the transaction value is applicable across all card networks for debit cards. As per NPCI, MDR of up to 0.30 per cent is applicable for UPI P2M (Person to Merchant) transactions.
Since January 2020, to promote digital transactions, MDR has been made zero for RuPay Debit Card and BHIM-UPI transactions, the minister added.
IANS