A rise in online communications or e-mails in the last five years has enabled the Income Tax Department to save a whopping Rs 977.54 crore on postage cost. Online communication with the department has more than doubled since 2013-14. According to data released by the Finance Ministry, the IT department saved Rs 212.27 crore in 2017-18, a remarkable growth from Rs 177.36 crore in 2016-17. In 2017-18, 14.15 crore emails were sent to the department, while in 2016-17, 11.8 crore emails were sent.
The postage cost was determined by taking Rs 15 as the average cost per post or ordinary post.
Paperless assessment was rolled out by the tax department in 2015-16, which saw a sudden leap in the amount of emails sent and also a jump in the amount saved by the department on postage cost. That year, Rs 348.55 was saved by the department on postage and the department received 23.23 crore emails.
The data showed that the Central Processing Centre (CPC) for Income Tax returns in Bengaluru has sent 73.73 crore digitally signed intimations by emails as well as 67.96 crore SMSes and 4.17 crore intimations by speed post across the country.
In 2017-18, the CPC processed 5.62 crore tax returns, a jump from the previous year's 4.57 crore returns. They have also processed 1,25,978 wealth tax returns electronically.
Last financial year the CPC also enabled taxpayers to log in the e-portal and file their grievances online. Up to December 31, 2016, 6.01 lakh grievances were received by the department out of which 5.98 lakh were addressed.