Income Tax Website giving pain to taxpayers and tax professionals
Income Tax website server not functioning good: Tax Professionals complaints about wastage of time due to portal issues
Dt. 11.07.2024: 31st July is the last date of filling Income Tax Returns for those taxpayers who are not liable for Audits. Its merely 19 days to go for bulk of the small tax payers to file their returns. This act of filling return is giving a painful experience due to the server of the portal down every now and then. As per the provisions of Income Tax Act, the assessee who isn’t liable for audit needs to file their return before 31st July. These tax payer as per the provisions gets nearly four months to file that returns. But factually, ever since the introduction of AIS and TIS tax payers merely gets two months to file the return as the data of AIS and TIS gets reflected by 31st may and not before. This is the reason tax payers needs to rush to file their returns during June and July. This pushes the panic button for the tax payers and tax professionals a more. The portal issue also hits the tax collection as the tax payment also now can only be done from the portal itself.
Talking to Tax Today on this Issue, Jayendra Tanna, President of Gujarat Traders Federation, says that “These portal issue may just be considered a “trailer” of a film and we may see more panic as the due date nears. I strongly insist and urge to the Finance minister to consider to permanently extend the due date of filling Income Tax return for the non audit tax payers to 31st August from the existing 31st July”.
Talking on the issue Bhashkar Patel, leading tax advocate and President Emeritus Central Gujarat Chamber of Tax Consultants, told that “Ever since the inception of AIS-TIS, the return filling is a different ball game. One can not think to file return before the proper reflection of Tax Payers income on AIS and TIS. Thus, presently the tax payers gets only two months to file the return. The due date must be revised to 31st August by amending the section 139(1) of the Income Tax Act. I am hopeful that FM will consider the representation given by various bodies to benefit small tax payers”.
It is necessary to extend the due date of filling Income Tax Return for tax payers not liable to audit from 31st July to 31st August amid AIS-TIS inception. This one month will give cushion to tax payers and also relax pressure on the portal. Positive decision of the 53rd GST Council meet now again give hope to the tax payers that this demand of permanently extending the time limits will also be addressed by the FM. Bhavya Popat, Editor, Tax Today.
