The Centre informed the Lok Sabha on Monday that the income tax e-filing portal has remained largely stable despite record filing volumes during the ongoing peak filing period. According to reports from Business Standard, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary provided detailed data showing substantial increases in portal activity between July 8-14, 2026, compared with the same period in 2025. The government acknowledged that while the portal has been functioning in a 'largely stable and efficient manner', some taxpayers may experience transient technical issues such as slower page response or intermittent delays during periods of peak concurrent load. In his latest written reply to the Lok Sabha on July 21, Chaudhary emphasized that the department has strengthened the e-filing portal to handle peak traffic during the return filing season, with infrastructure capable of processing up to one crore income tax returns a day.
ITR filings witnessed a dramatic surge, with 12.21 lakh returns filed on July 14, 2026, compared to 4.09 lakh in 2025. As reported by Business Standard, daily ITR filings ranged in the 8-12 lakh range in 2026 against 3-4 lakh last year. The number of logins also increased significantly, reaching 98.86 lakh on July 14, 2026, compared with 67.66 lakh in 2025. The total count of key activities including ITR filing, logins, challan generation and Form 26AS view/download reached 1.61 crore on July 14, 2026, compared with 95.33 lakh in the previous year. According to the latest government data, traffic on the portal has increased substantially compared with last year, with daily ITR filings more than doubling year-on-year on several days during the peak period.
According to data available on the Income Tax e-filing portal, nearly 3 crore returns (2,99,19,219) had been filed for AY 2026-27 till July 20, 2026. Of these, 2.83 crore returns had been verified by taxpayers, while 1.73 crore ITRs had been processed by the Income Tax Department. The Income Tax Department's e-filing portal does not provide a form-wise breakup of returns filed so far, but given separate deadlines prescribed this year for taxpayers with non-business income and those with business income, most returns filed so far have been under ITR-1 and ITR-2. A comparison of total returns filed this year till now with returns data for ITR-1 and ITR-2 for AY 2025-27 suggests that about 1.5 crore returns are yet to be filed in ITR-1 and ITR-2 forms to match the previous year's level.
To strengthen the system ahead of the filing season, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has upgraded the portal's infrastructure and increased its capacity to process up to one crore income tax returns (ITRs) a day. According to the Finance Ministry, the e-filing ecosystem has been performance-tested and validated to process up to 1 crore income tax returns in a single day, significantly higher than current filing volumes. The department has expanded computing resources, storage, memory, network infrastructure and internet bandwidth to support this enhanced capacity. Performance is monitored continuously through a dedicated daily/hourly monitoring dashboard tracking logins, ITRs filed, AIS redirections, payment gateway status, error codes and other indicators. The government has enhanced computing, storage and network capacity, rectified issues seen in previous filing seasons, set up a 24x7 monitoring mechanism including a central 'War Room' to continuously monitor portal performance, and upgraded cybersecurity measures.
