India now has 576 individuals who declared a gross total income of Rs. 100 crore or more in Assessment Year 2025-26, up from just 142 in AY 2021-22, according to data shared by the Finance Ministry in Parliament. The number has grown steadily through the years in between too, going from 301 in AY 2022-23 to 284 in AY 2023-24, before jumping to 415 in AY 2024-25 and then to 576 this year. Taken together, the trend points to a wealthier country where more people are earning big incomes and, just as importantly, choosing to report them.
The same climb shows up further down the income ladder as well. The number of individuals declaring income above Rs. 1 crore has grown roughly fivefold over the past decade, from about 44,000 in AY 2013-14 to nearly 2.3 lakh in AY 2023-24, while total individual ITR filings more than doubled over the same stretch. Even the very top of the pyramid has thickened, with 23 individuals now reporting income above Rs. 500 crore and 262 in the Rs. 100-500 crore band, compared to just a handful a decade ago.
The figures were presented in Parliament by Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary, who was responding to a question on the country’s wealthiest earners. Chaudhary also pointed out that there is no statutory definition of the word “billionaire” under either the new Income-tax Act, 2025, or the older Income-tax Act, 1961, and that the government’s only real window into India’s richest individuals is through what they choose to declare in their tax filings.
What stands out in the data is how consistent the growth has been, save for one dip. Numbers fell from 301 to 284 between AY 2022-23 and AY 2023-24, likely a reflection of a choppier year for markets and capital gains, before the sharp recovery that followed. From AY 2024-25 to AY 2025-26 alone, the count of Rs. 100 crore-plus earners grew by close to 39%, the steepest single-year jump in the five-year window. Filings in the Rs. 1 crore-plus bracket tell a similar story of expansion. As of the FY 2024-25 return cycle, over 3.24 lakh individuals had reported income above Rs. 1 crore, with 2.97 lakh of them in the Rs. 1-5 crore band, around 16,800 in the Rs. 5-10 crore range, and just over 10,000 declaring incomes beyond Rs. 10 crore. When companies, firms, HUFs and trusts are added to that count, the number of entities reporting income above Rs. 1 crore crosses 4.68 lakh.
The composition of who these earners are has also shifted a little. Salaried individuals now make up close to 52% of all taxpayers reporting income above Rs. 1 crore, a share that has been inching up over the past decade as compensation at senior corporate and startup roles has climbed. That share drops sharply as incomes rise further, though. Of the 262 individuals in the Rs. 100-500 crore bracket, only 19 were salaried, and none of the 23 individuals above Rs. 500 crore drew a salary at all, a reminder that the country’s very top earners are still overwhelmingly business owners, promoters and investors rather than employees.
Inequality has fallen in both urban and rural areas
The government has also tied these numbers to broader indicators of economic inclusion. Citing the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2023-24, the ministry noted that the Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality on a scale of 0 to 1, fell in both rural and urban India, from 0.266 to 0.237 in rural areas and from 0.314 to 0.284 in cities, suggesting the rural-urban income gap has been narrowing even as the number of ultra-high earners keeps growing. The unemployment rate for people aged 15 and above has also eased, from 3.6% in 2022 to 3.1% in 2025, according to figures cited from NITI Aayog.
The overall tax base has widened alongside this. ITR filings had crossed 9 crore for FY 2024-25 as of the return deadline, up from 7.78 crore three years earlier, and India’s registered taxpayer base now stands close to 14 crore. Separately, India’s billionaire count crossed 284 in the latest Hurun Global Rich List, with their combined wealth estimated at around Rs. 98 lakh crore, roughly a third of the country’s GDP. Whether that scale of wealth concentration at the very top is itself a separate concern is a different conversation. What Monday’s numbers in Parliament show is more specific: a growing pool of individuals crossing the Rs. 100 crore mark, and doing so on the record.