The most frequently asked question by taxpayers in their minds throughout the year, during the tax return submission season, is: What is the due date for filing ITR? This is due to the fact that the taxpayers typically have 30–45 days in actuality to fulfill their tax return filing obligations, although April 1 marks the beginning of the new financial year and the income tax department announces required ITR forms in the first month of the financial year and then deploys online and offline utilities of these forms so that tax return filing can be done.
Utility delay and TDS update delay hinder early filing
This year, the tax department was a little bit late in intimating all ITR forms, and that is natural because some significant changes had to be undertaken in these ITR forms (Forms 1–7) to match modifications and amendments in tax provisions and laws introduced in the budget during the previous year. However, the government has not yet updated utilities to enable taxpayers to file ITR online through the income tax department's e-filing portal.
And even when the tax department does update utilities now, which will anyway be done shortly, likely within a week or ten days from now, another problem taxpayers have is that TDS deducted for the fourth quarter of the financial year for a person or entity gets updated in Form 26AS by May 31 once the income tax department makes up their minds to process it. So, in case a person wishes to file a return of income for the previous financial year, he or she may not possess the entire TDS deducted for the whole financial year because the last quarter TDS is processed in May-end.
The second thing with salaried taxpayers is that they receive Form 16 from their employers within 15 days of the processing of TDS and begin appearing in Form 26AS. Thus, in a sense, if a salaried person wishes to file ITR, he or she will have to wait for June 15 or later for the availability of Form 16 from his or her employer. Although it is not mandatory to have Form 16 to file an ITR, it can be filed with the aid of Form 26AS and other documents.
Will the deadline for filing ITR be extended this year as well?
Amidst all that, as every year, the million-dollar question is: will the income tax department postpone the ITR filing deadline beyond July 31? The answer is not certain at this stage, since the government has in the past extended the deadline on some occasions. But those extensions were for reasons of technical hitches that tax return filers experienced or some other extraordinary situations, like what happened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, in the usual scenario, the income tax department has never given the extension before, so it is likely that they may not do it this time either. We posed this question to a couple of experts as well. Here's what they say:
In the view of CA (Dr.) Surana, traditionally, the income tax department has made such decisions nearer the due date, but only in exceptional circumstances.
"Earlier extensions have been made available only in select circumstances like widespread technical disruptions on the e-filing portal, late release of Form 16 or Annual Information Statements (AIS), or exceptional circumstances like natural calamities or public health crises," he stressed.
So far, no such exceptional circumstances have arisen that warrant a change in the filing schedule, he added.
Abhishek Mundada, Partner, Dhruva Advisors, opines that as the due date for filing ITR is July 31, there is sufficient time to keep it within time.
So, it will have to be observed how early the government makes available the online utilities for filing tax returns and whether the tax return filing is smooth this year. So if all goes well, and there are no reports of technical snags, and there are no abnormal situations, then most likely July 31 will still be the due date for filing ITR in non-audit cases.