ITR Filing Last Date: The Income Tax Department has not extended the due date to file income tax returns, or ITR, for taxpayers in the country. The due date to file ITR was last week, which has gone by. Taxpayers can still file their ITRs if they missed the date due to some reason, through a process called ‘belated ITR’. However, they need to pay a penalty in case they want to file a belated ITR as per the provisions of the Finance Act of the government. The Centre had last year extended the September deadline to file income tax returns due to technical glitches in the online portal.
The Income Tax Department, however, did not extend its December 31 deadline, saying that it had received no requests to do so and all the work was being carried out smoothly. On the day, in a press briefing of the GST Council meet chaired by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, revenue secretary Tarun Bajaj confirmed that there are absolutely no chances to extend the due date of ITR filing.
“There is no proposal to extend the date for income tax return filing. Income tax return filing is going on smoothly. By 3pm today, 5.62 crore returns have been filed in total. Today, more than 20 lakh returns were filed. This year 60 lakh more returns have been filed,” Bajaj had said during the press briefing to reporters, ruling out any possibility of extension of deadline.
However, according to the government rule under the Finance Act, taxpayers can file income tax returns after the due date. This means that taxpayers have time until March 2022 to file their ITR. As per the provisions, this will attract a penalty of Rs 5,000 for taxpayers with total income of Rs 5 lakh and up. For taxpayers with less than Rs 5 lakh total income, the fine amount is Rs 1,000 while those who are exempt from paying income tax do not have to pay any penalty.
Those who have already filed their income tax returns are also eligible to file a revised return if there was a gap in filing the original tax return. The last date to do this is also March 31, 2022.
Nearly 5.89 crore income tax returns for the 2020-21 fiscal (ended March 2021) have been filed on the new e-filing portal till December 31 deadline, the I-T department said on Saturday. Of this, more than 46.11 lakh ITRs were filed on the last date or December 31 alone.
“Nearly 5.89 crore Income Tax Returns (ITRs) have been filed on the new e-filing portal of the Income Tax Department as on 31st December, 2021, the extended due date,” the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said in a statement. In comparison, as on January 10, 2021, (the extended due date for ITRs for AY 2020-21), the total number of ITRs filed was 5.95 crore. As many as 31.05 lakh ITRs filed were on the last day or January 10, 2021.
Out of 5.89 crore ITRs filed for AY 2021-22 (2020-21 fiscal), 49.6 per cent of these are ITR1 (2.92 crore), 9.3 per cent are ITR2 (54.8 lakh), 12.1 per cent are ITR3 (71.05 lakh), 27.2 per cent are ITR4 (1.60 crore), 1.3 per cent are ITR5 (7.66 lakh). Besides, 2.58 lakh ITR-6 and 0.67 lakh ITR7 were filed. “Over 45.7 per cent of these ITRs have been filed using the online ITR form on the portal and the balance have been uploaded using the ITR created from the offline software utilities,” it said, adding it would work tirelessly to ensure a smooth and stable taxpayer service experience.
(With PTI inputs)
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