The year 2024 saw the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) prioritising the speedy processing of returns and refunds, with over Rs 2.35 lakh crore refunded and more than 3.87 crore Income Tax Returns (ITRs) processed within 7 days. Innovations like TIN 2.0, pre-filling of ITRs, and updated returns continued to streamline processes, resulting in 47.52 lakh updated returns filed, Ministry of Finance said.

Refunds amounting to about Rs 3.08 lakh crore issued between 1st April, 2024 and 27th November, 2024 which is about 46.31 per cent higher than refunds during the same period in preceding year. CBDT also achieved a milestone in terms of ITR filing as 8.50 crore ITRs were filed till November 22, 2024 which is 7.32 per cent higher than ITRs filed for the corresponding period of the preceding year.

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Central Board of Indirect taxes and Customs (CBIC) also leveraged advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence to further strengthened its registration processes by refining the risk rating system for applicants, ensuring rigorous verification to prevent fraud. Initiatives such as geo-tagging of business locations, system-based suspension of registrations for non-filers, and risk-based refund processing continued to demonstrate CBIC’s commitment to curbing malpractices.

CBIC also took initiatives like GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B promoting timely returns and seamless availability of input tax credits.Technological advancements like ICEGATE 2.0 and the Anonymised Escalation Mechanism continued to modernise tax administration.

In 2024, some of the key achievements by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) were the Financial Intelligence Unit-India (FIU-IND), a central nodal agency that acts as an interface between the financial section and Law Enforcement Agency (LEAs). FIU collects, analyses and disseminates information to LEAs about suspicious financial transactions pertaining to money laundering, terrorism and proliferation financing.

The Ministry also highlighted the recent measures for simplification, trade facilitation and Ease of Doing Business under GST. These were the insertion of section 128A in CGST Act, 2017 has been carried out to provide for conditional waiver of interest or penalty; Reduction of Government Litigation by Fixing monetary limits; Amendment in Section 107 and Section 112 of CGST Act for reducing the amount of pre-deposit required to be paid for filing of appeals under GST; Reduction in rate of TCS to be collected by the ECOs for supplies being made through them; and change in due date for filing of return in FORM GSTR-4 among others.