While the number of Indian taxpayers earning over Rs 1 crore increased over 23.5 percent to 59,830 during the assessment year 2015-16, the larger number of individuals in this category had Rs 50,889 crore less income than in the previous year, data released by the government showed on Wednesday.

According to data from the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), for fiscal 2014-15, corresponding to tax assessment year 2015-16, 59,830 individuals with gross total income of over Rs 1 crore had a cumulative income of Rs 1.54 lakh crore.

During the previous assessment year (AY) 2014-15, the number of individuals with gross income of over Rs 1 crore were 48,417 with a cumulative income of Rs 2.05 lakh crore.

As many as 4.07 crore individuals filed income tax returns in AY 2015-16, of whom around 82 lakh showed zero income or less than Rs 2.5 lakh, which is not liable for tax.

For assessment year 2014-15, 3.65 crore people filed returns, with 1.37 of these crore showing zero or less than Rs 2.5 lakh income.

The combined income of all individual assessees rose to Rs 21.27 lakh crore in AY 2015-16, from Rs 18.41 lakh crore in the previous year.

The Rs 2.5-3.5 lakh income category had the largest number of 1.33 crore individuals during AY 2015-16.

There were 55,331 persons with income between Rs 1 crore and Rs 5 crore during the latest assessment year for which figures have been released. while there were 3,020 individuals with income between Rs 5 crore and Rs 10 crore, a total of 1,156 individuals had income between Rs 10 crore and Rs 25 crore in AY 2015-16.

The number of individuals in the Rs 100-500 crore group rose to 31, from 17 in AY 2014-15.

The CBDT data also showed that as many as 4.35 crore income tax returns, including those by corporates, were filed in AY 2015-16 with total income declared of Rs 33.62 lakh crore.

“In continuation of its efforts to place more and more information in public domain, the CBDT has released data relating to distribution of income and tax payable in respect of returns filed for the AY 2015-16,” a Finance Ministry release said here.

“With this release, detailed income-tax data for four recent assessment years (apart from Time-series Data from financial years 2000-01 to 2016-17) have become available in public domain enabling researchers, scholars, policy makers, students and all other stakeholders to make a better analysis of the trends in incomes and tax payments,” it added.