With the new Income Tax portal yet to become fully functional, the Finance Ministry on Sunday extended the deadlines for several categories of taxpayers to submit tax-related forms electronically.
The fresh deadlines for 11 specified forms, a couple of which have been extended to March 31, 2022, largely pertain to institutional taxpayers, not individuals. These include multinational firms, sovereign wealth funds, and bodies like charitable trusts that avail income tax exemption, among others.
The new IT portal, launched on June 7, has been plagued with persistent technical glitches and ‘down time’. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has directed Infosys, the tech vendor for the portal, to fix its ‘current functionalities’ by September 15, following a meeting with its managing director and CEO Salil Parekh last week.
“On consideration of difficulties reported by the taxpayers and other stakeholders in electronic filing of certain Forms under the provisions of the Income-tax Act,1961 read with Income-tax Rules,1962 (Rules), Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has decided to further extend the due dates for electronic filing of such forms,” the Ministry said in a statement.
“The extension will provide much needed relief to taxpayers for making the compliances and will also save them from penal consequences of not being able to comply with the earlier timelines, due to technical glitches in the IT portal,” said Shailesh Kumar, partner at Nangia & Co. LLP.
Taxpayers have been facing lot of problems in meeting compliance timelines under various provisions due to the portal’s glitches, Mr Kumar pointed out. “These include filing of Equalization Levy return, making application for registration of charitable trusts and other institutions for income tax exemption, quarterly statements by authorised dealers in respect of foreign remittances, filing of necessary intimation by Sovereign wealth funds and reporting by multinational enterprises,” he said.
“The extension has been made not only to address immediate filing requirements due within August or September 2021, but also some medium-term relief has been given to taxpayers for some compliances, which were due in the month of November and December 2021,” Mr. Kumar said.
Separately, the last date for taxpayers to pay up dues under the Vivad Se Vishwas Scheme for direct tax dispute resolution has also been extended from August 31 to September 30, where no additional amount is payable. However, where taxpayers are required to pay an additional amount to the government, the current October 31 deadline has been retained, the Ministry emphasised.
In an unrelated development, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs has extended the deadline to avail an amnesty scheme under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, from August 31 to November 30.
