More than 20 million income tax returns have been filed electronically, the income-tax department said on Thursday, a growth of more than 26% from a year ago.

The department received 20.6 million returns on the e-filing portal, as against 16.3 million returns last year.

The last date for filing tax returns was 7 September.

Of the total returns filed, almost 3.3 million returns were verified online through an electronic verification code. This year the tax department had introduced this facility, doing away with the need for signing the acknowledgement form and mailing it to the tax department. This has consequently hastened the pace of tax return processing.

The central processing centre of the income tax department has processed some 4.5 million returns so far and issued refunds to 2.24 million taxpayers.

The peak filing rate in the current fiscal year touched 3,475 returns per minute compared with 2,901 returns per minute last year, the tax department said in its statement. (LiveMint)