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Business News/ Money / Personal Finance/  Will ITR filing deadline for FY 2021-22 be extended? What tax experts say

Will ITR filing deadline for FY 2021-22 be extended? What tax experts say

The ITR filing for the assessment year 2022-23 (AY23) is now available on the income tax e-filing

ITR filing deadline: Some taxpayers  are even assuming that like the previous two years, the govt might extend the deadline this year too.

The ITR filing deadline for FY 2021-2022 is July 31. However, it has been observed that a large number of taxpayers wait for the last moment to file their ITRs. Some taxpayers are even assuming that like the previous two years, the govt might extend the deadline this year too.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic and glitches in the newly launched income tax portal, the deadlines for ITR filing and other other income tax-related things were extended in a row for the last two years.

On July 2, 2022, the income tax department on its official Twitter handle said that software provider Infosys is taking "proactive measures" to deal with the 'irregular traffic' on the portal.

"It has been noticed that taxpayers are facing issues in accessing ITD e-filing portal. As informed by @Infosys, they have observed some irregular traffic on the portal for which proactive measures are being taken. Some users may be inconvenienced, which is regretted," the I-T department tweeted.

Is there a chance of the ITR filing deadline being extended this year as well? What tax experts have to say on this

Amit Gupta, MD, SAG Infotech

In a recent tweet, the income tax department expressed concern about irregular traffic on its portal, which has led to the website's slowdown. Hopefully, this means that the tax department is planning to extend the deadline for filing ITRs. In spite of the fact that it is somewhat unfortunate that even after more than a year of a new website being launched, it is not able to handle traffic on the portal, it might have been because more assesses attempted to file ITRs early.

ITR Forms and Utilities were released well in advance this year, so the extension may not be necessary this year. CBDT may need to extend the deadline to enable compliance if the portal slows down and taxpayers are unable to do the necessary filings.

Gourav Gunjan, Partner at Gupta Sachdeva & Co., Chartered Accountants

The nation is still recovering from the aftermath of an epidemic. Deadline for filing of ITR for FY 20-21 were extended as recent as 15th March 2022. Business men are striving hard to manage work and compliances balance. Professionals are also finding it difficult to comply with unending due dates. Data published by Income Tax Department shows that 99.20 lakhs ITR were filed in first week of July 2022 against approx 7.5 crores ITR to be filed till 31st July 2022. Given this scenario, it seems very improbable that approx 6.5 crore ITR will be filed within 21 days. Income Tax portal is also constantly riddled with technical glitches which were accepted even by department itself in a tweet. Unless the portal works smoothly and deadlines are extended by at least 1 month, it will be herculean task for taxpayers to comply with the deadline. So we are optimistic that Income Tax Department will take cognizance of the difficulties faced by the taxpayers as well as professionals and return filing date will be extended by at least one month.

Justin M Bharucha, Managing Partner, Bharucha & Partners

I think that they should establish a reasonable, longer than presently permitted, timeline for filing and then enforce adherence to that new timeline. Certainty of positions, and reasonable positions, are important for business. Ad hoc extensions as a matter of course (there have been 8 extensions in the last 11 years - 6 extensions in the 9 years preceding the pandemic!) underline that assessees need a little more time to file returns than the extant default and it would be good to address this systemically and clearly.

Meanwhile, the ITR filing for the assessment year 2022-23 (AY23) is now available on the income tax e-filing.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sangeeta Ojha

A business media enthusiast. Writes on personal finance, business and banking.
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