Salaries no longer sole source of income for young Indians

New Delhi: Indians are increasingly diversifying their income beyond traditional salaries towards income from side hustles, freelancing, trading, and business ventures, as a significant percentage of self-filers on the ClearTax portal reported income from non-salary sources in Assessment Year 2026-27, the fintech platform said in a report on Monday. Data from ClearTax’s Income Tax Return (ITR) filings for Assessment Year (AY) 2026-27 has highlighted this changing behaviour.

Non-ITR-1 filings accounted for 62 per cent of all ClearTax filings in AY 2026-27, compared with 53 per cent in AY 2025-26 and 40 per cent in AY 2024-25.

Further, ITR-2 and ITR-3 filings, which capture income from capital gains and other sources, together accounted for 57.2 per cent of filings, up from 36.2 per cent two years ago. In AY 2026-27, 47 per cent of self-filers on the Clear Tax portal reported income from investments, business, freelancing or cryptocurrency, compared with just 9.5 per cent in AY 2022-23 — reflecting diversification of income sources. Also, the share of self-filers reporting two or more non-salary income sources rose from 3.5 per cent to 24 per cent during the same period.

ClearTax Founder and CEO Archit Gupta said a growing number of taxpayers are reporting multiple income streams and more complex financial portfolios with young professionals participating in equity markets and taking up independent work to households diversifying their investments.