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Extend ITR deadline till August 31; ‘Why the last date for filing income tax returns should be extended this year’

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The All Gujarat Federation of Tax Consultants and Income Tax Bar Association have raised concerns over the issues in the functioning of Income Tax Portal and updates in AIS/TIS. They have requested for extension of the deadline for filing Income Tax Returns for AY 2024-25 from July 31, 2024 to August 31, 2024. The letter sent has been addressed to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Also Read: ITR Filing Date is July 31: Will Banks Be Open or Closed This Saturday, July 20?

A copy of the letter sent to the Secretary of the Treasury can be found at the Income Tax Bar Association’s X-name.

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The Karnataka State Chartered Accountants Association (KSCAA) and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) have also written to the Income Tax Department regarding concerns regarding Form 26AS/TIS/AIS and e-filing of ITR forms, and other technical issues on the tax portal.

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Ravi Kumar, CEO of UdChalo, a company with an e-Return Intermediary (ERI) license (ERI license-ERIP002149), said: “Based on feedback from individual taxpayers, including soldiers stationed in operational areas, I believe the deadline for filing income tax returns (ITR) should be permanently extended by two months for them. This is because reliable internet access is often not available in counter-insurgency regions and soldiers are not allowed to have smartphones. This severely hampers their ability to file their ITRs, as they now have to be filed online.”

Below is a summary of the technical issues with the e-filing ITR portal that the All Gujarat Federation of Tax Consultants and the Income Tax Bar Association have raised in their letter to the FM.

All Gujarat Federation of Tax Consultants and Income Tax Bar Association said, “We sincerely hope that the government under the dynamic leadership of Hon’ble PM Shri Narendra Modi and Hon’ble FM Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman will provide the required reliefs to the taxpayers at the earliest.”

Technical problems on the portal:
It is also to draw your attention to the fact that the Income Tax Portal has not been functioning properly for almost a month now. There are many glitches such as – – Slow speed of the portal while loading every page,
– Upload issues where upload fails with unexpected errors – Pages become unresponsive
– Taxpayers are continuously facing no response from UIDAI for Aadhar based OTP verification etc.
The department addresses the issues through a grievance redressal mechanism and by providing responses to many queries raised through the official Twitter handle of X (formerly known as Twitter) namely @IncomeTaxIndia.

There are so many issues where this handle has given canned answers stating that there are issues every now and then. We have reported them to the concerned team. The technical team is working on resolving the issues. However, kindly provide your details (with PAN and mobile no.) on [email protected] so that our team can assist you.

I would like to bring to your attention that the taxpayers and tax professionals are working hard as there is very little time now to file income tax returns for the taxpayer (except audit) with a deadline of 31st July. This year there are several issues with updating the data in AIS and TIS which have been delayed this year and are still being updated.

Need to increase time limit due to reporting requirements and transaction complexity:
In an era where CPC processes ITRs at lightning speed and discrepancies between reporting in AIS/TIS and 26AS and income tax returns are communicated as errors or subject to notices for rectification, it takes time to prepare and file returns.

Even after the introduction of increased limit u/s 44AD upto turnover of Rs. 2/3 Crore & proviso to section 44AB with no requirement of audit upto turnover of Rs. 10 Crore in this era of digital payments, the cases where due date of 31st July is applicable have increased drastically. Moreover, the requirement of auditing and application of other provisions like TDS, 269SS/T, 43B, GST etc. still remain applicable in such cases, which require a lot of time and effort before filing ITRs. The present annual reporting under 43B(h) in respect of payments made to MSME has also added the need for a lot of time to find figures and consider the same for preparing income tax returns even in unaudited corporate cases.

No point in taking an extension with a non-functioning portal:
The smooth functioning of e-filing portal is crucial for filing income tax returns. Nowadays, professionals have to deal with data from the portal multiple times before filing income tax returns. The verification time has been reduced to 30 days and Aadhar OTP is one of the most preferred mediums for e-verification of returns. From the current year, the need for DSC has been removed even in case of verified persons, where Aadhar OTP is required.

As long as the portal is not functioning properly, extensions of the payment term or other gestures by the government regarding the alleviation of fines or interest for late payment will be in vain.
Since the portal is not functioning properly and there are heavy reporting requirements, you are kindly requested to:
(a) Instruct the technical team, vendor and officials responsible for maintaining the portal to ensure that the portal functions smoothly as it did last year and takes into account the growing taxpayer base.
And
(b)Extend the filing deadline for the 2024-2025 tax year from July 31, 2024 to August 31, 2024.


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(Originally published on Jul 18, 2024)