India’s Income Tax Decade: Doubling Returns, Soaring Refunds & Shifting Burdens (2013–2024)
At the dawn of the e-filing statistics era, FY 2013–14 recorded 3.8 crore Indians filing an income tax return, and the government collected ₹6.38 lakh crore in direct taxes. By FY 2023–24, those numbers had grown to 8.6 crore returns and ₹19.6 lakh crore in collections. That’s a 2.3X increase in returns filed and a 3X jump in revenue in just 10 years. But behind…