Income Tax Return Filing Last Date: The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) is expected to extend the last date to file income tax returns (ITR) for the financial year (FY) 2020-21 (AY 2021-22), reports claimed on Monday. Earlier the deadline for filing ITR for FY21 was extended from July 31 to September 30, 2021 in the wake of the unprecedented Covid-19 situation.
The finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has given Infosys (the company which set up the new portal) time till September 15 to fix all the problems. However, this means that an individual is left with only 15 days to file ITR before the expiry of due date and that too with a new unfamiliar system which even experienced chartered accountants are finding a challenge. Chartered accountant society representatives are also saying that the deadline should be extended in view of the state of the e-filing portal. Therefore, it appears likely that the ITR filing deadline would be extended.
One should keep in mind that last year too, the government has extended the due date of filing ITR for individuals four times – first from July 31 to November 30, 2020, then to December 31, 2020, and finally to January 10, 2021.
Take a look at some of the tweets here:
@nsitharaman what a pathetic state of affairs for tax filling. While validating OTP via aadhar it says link PAN to aadhar. When I go link to link it says PAN already linked pic.twitter.com/ak1pkjuPvh
— Avinash Choubey (@akchaubey) August 22, 2021
As much as @Infosys owe an explanation to taxpayer,
Finance Minister @nsitharaman owe an explanation to taxpayer as to why existing income tax portal was removed without preparing new one, the new income tax portal with so many glitches and error costs around Rs.4500 crores.— Rishabh Jain (@rishi28_jain) August 23, 2021
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance has summoned Salil Parekh, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Infosys, to explain why the new income tax portal (www.incometax.gov.in), is not working seamlessly. “Ministry of Finance has summoned Sh Salil Parekh, MD & CEO @Infosys on 23/08/2021 to explain to hon’ble FM as to why even after 2.5 months since launch of new e-filing portal, glitches in the portal have not been resolved. In fact, since 21/08/2021 the portal itself is not available,” the Income Tax department said in a tweet on Sunday.
