After repeated request made by the taxpayers and professionals for the extension of due date for filing the income tax return (ITR), the government on Wednesday extended the deadline to ITR for individuals by 10 days to January 10, 2021. However, this has failed to bring cheers to the taxpayers who were expecting the due date to be extended by a month to January 31, 2021 from December 31, 2020.
Considering it as the shortest extension ever, professionals are of the view that these 10 days of extension of due date won’t be enough to file all the returns even if they work day and night.
However, this is the third time that the government has extended the deadline to file ITR -- first from the normal deadline of July 31 to November 30, 2020, and then to December 31, 2020. The deadline for filing tax returns by businesses too has been extended till February 15, the finance ministry said in a statement.
Professions have tweeted that in this unprecedented time of covid-19, when many businesses and professionals are struggling to work with minimum manpower, this 10-15 days of extension of due date in filing the ITR has not provided and relief to the common man.
“In the past 50 years whenever, there is extension of due dates by the income tax department, it is for more than one month on an average, for multiple reasons. However, in past 100 years there was never a pandemic like coronavirus, hence this extension of 10-15 days is not justified,” tweeted chartered accountant, Chirag Chauhan.
Meanwhile FPJ has reported how the last-minute rush to file the ITR on time has resulted in the income tax department web site crashing. Moreover, many tax payers filing e-returns faced difficulty in receipt of Aadhaar based OTP for the purpose of e-verification of ITRs filed.
Also, many of the small businesses, who are yet to file returns, are finding themselves in a troublesome situation to file their ITR by the given deadline. A survey by LocalCircles showed that around 41 per cent small businesses think that it is impossible to file their returns by December 31 and had requested for an extension to the deadline.
The Due dates of Filing has been extended as follows:
Income Tax Returns Audit Assessees: 15th February, 2021
Income Tax Returns Last Date for Non Tax Audit Assessees: 10th January, 2021
Tax Audit Report Last Date: 15th January, 2021
Vivad Se Viswas Last Date: 31st January,2021
