New Delhi, February 14: With Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday expressed his surprise on the fact that only 2,200 people in the country had declared earnings of Rs 1 crore per annum, Income Tax department on Thursday sharing income tax return data for the financial year 2018-19 through a series of tweets. The IT Department even claimed that certain misinformation is being circulated in social media pertaining to individual return filers. In the tweets, the IT Dept mentioned the number of 2,200 CAs, doctors, lawyers and others declaring income over Rs 1 crore.

Taking to Twitter and clearing the doubts, IT department wrote, "Certain misinformation is being circulated in Social Media pertaining to individual return filers. CBDT clarifies: During the current financial year, 5.78 crore individuals filed returns disclosing income of financial year 2018-19."

Adding more, it wrote, "Out of these,1.03 crore individuals have shown income below Rs 2.5 lakh & 3.29 crore individuals disclosed taxable income between Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 5 lakh. Out of 5.78 crore returns filed during this financial year, 4.32 crore individuals have disclosed income upto Rs 5 lakh." Income Tax Calculator Launched Online by I-T Department; Here's How You Can Calculate Your Tax Under New And Old Regime.

It said further, "The Finance Act, 2019 has exempted individual tax payers having income up to Rs 5 lakh. Therefore, these 4.32 crore individual tax payers having income up to Rs 5 lakh shall not be liable to pay tax for the current financial year 2019-20 and subsequent years."

Among other things, the Income Tax department said, "Hence, only around 1.46 crore individual tax payers are liable to pay income-tax. Further, around 1 crore individuals disclosed income between Rs. 5-10 lakh and only 46 lakh individual tax payers have disclosed income above Rs 10 lakh. Only 3.16 lakh individual tax payers have disclosed income above Rs 50 lakh. The number of individual tax payers who have disclosed income above Rs 5 crore in the whole of the country is only around 8,600."

It said, "In the ITRs filed by individuals in current financial year, only about 2200 doctors, chartered accountants, lawyers & such other professionals have disclosed annual income of more than Rs 1 crore from their profession (excluding other incomes like rental, interest,capital gains etc)."

Here are the threads:

Earlier on Wednesday, while addressing Times Now Summit in New Delhi, PM Modi had said that when a number of people did not pay tax and found ways to evade it. He had added that due to this the burden falls on those who honestly pay their dues and expressed his surprise on the fact that only 2,200 people in the country had declared earnings of Rs 1 crore per annum.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 14, 2020 04:39 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).