Despite a social media campaign to defer the deadline for filing income tax returns, the government is ruling out an extension, arguing that annual filings by individuals crossed the 4 crore mark on Thursday evening.

This translates into 68% of filings as of December 31, 2021, when the deadline was extended due to the second wave of Covid-19 and glitches with the IT portal.

A tax official told TOI, “The pace of filing has accelerated, we got three lakh returns during an hour on Thursday, while there is no discussion at the moment to extend the deadline of July 31.”

However some glitches emerge, as happened on Thursday, when some issues were related to Form 26AS Officials said that (which is related to tax deducted or collection at source and the amount paid during the year), the issues are resolved at the earliest.

The War Room is there to deal with such problems and queries, the department is also monitoring the complaints on social media and addressing them in the shortest possible time. Officials said that in some cases the question has been answered on the social media platform itself.

Central Board of Direct Taxes is advising taxpayers to download Annual Information Statement (AIS) and Taxpayer Information Summary so that they have complete data on their income from multiple sources and no information is missed. An official said, “This is to enhance the ease of filing returns for the taxpayers as most of the information is available at one place. This year the information has improved a lot as compared to last year and as we move forward , more data will be added.”

Officials also said that there were some issues related to the fourth quarter figures, which were not getting reflected in some cases, but the AIS was updated later.