India Inc gets time till Mar 15 to file income tax returns

The government on Tuesday extended till March 15 the deadline for corporate to file Income Tax returns for the fiscal ended March 2021.

The deadline to file tax audit report and transfer pricing audit report for 2020-21 fiscal too has been extended till February 15.

This is the third extension given to corporate for filing the income tax return for 2020-21 fiscal.

The original deadline for filing ITR for corporate was October 31, and those with transfer pricing transactions was November 30.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) in a statement said that on consideration of difficulties reported by the taxpayers and other stakeholders due to Covid and in electronic filing of various reports of audit, it has decided to further extend the due dates for filing of Income Tax Returns and various reports of audit for the Assessment Year 2021-22 (2020-21 fiscal).

The extended deadline for filing ITR for corporate is now March 15, and the tax audit report is February 15, 2022.

The last date for filing 2020-21 ITRs without penalty for individual taxpayers ended on December 31, 2021, and nearly 5.89 crore ITR was filed by the due date.

Nangia & Co LLP partner Shailesh Kumar said considering the difficulty of taxpayers in light of the fresh surge of Covid cases in the country and also technical glitches being faced in filing Tax Audit Report and other compliances related to filing ITR, the extension of around one month granted by the government to taxpayers for filing their Tax Audit Report and extension of 15 days for cases covered by Transfer Pricing compliances is a welcome move and will grant relief to taxpayers.

AMRG & Associates Senior Partner Rajat Mohan said the finance ministry has finally accepted the request to allow additional time for taxpayers and audit professionals to complete the tax filings and it considers difficulties reported by the tax professionals due to COVID.

“This will come as a substantial relief for all the corporate taxpayers.

"However, no relief has been extended to salaried class individuals and MSME non-auditable non-corporate businesses,” Mohan added.

Taxman DGM Rahul Singh said it should be noted that no relief has been granted from the interest chargeable under section 234A if the tax liability exceeds Rs 1 lakh.

Thus, if the self-assessment tax liability of the taxpayer exceeds Rs 1 lakh, he would be liable to pay interest under section 234A from the expiry of the original due dates.