ITR Due Date Extension AY 2024-25: The income tax return filing deadline of July 31 is fast approaching. The Income Tax Department has started receiving requests from individual taxpayers and tax professionals for extending the ITR due date for AY 2024-25 beyond July 31.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) recently wrote a letter to the Income Tax Department, stating that tax professionals and individual taxpayers are facing technical glitches on the income tax e-filing portal, so the ITR filing deadline should be extended.
Many taxpayers took to social media to raise their grievances on the matter, saying the Income Tax Department should have anticipated this surge in e-filing cases and better prepared to handle the load on the server.
This is not the first time that issues related to tax payments and e-filing portal have surfaced. In the previous years also, taxpayers faced similar issues while trying to file tax returns before ITR due date.
What did Income Tax Department say on ‘technical glitch’ complaints?
Meanwhile, the Income Tax Department has also accepted that there are certain issues and it is working to resolve them, without giving any timeline for the resolution.
ICAI has highlighted several issues taxpayers are facing in payments of taxes and filing of returns on the e-filing portal due to technical glitches. The chartered accountants body has sought fast resolution of these issues to ensure seamless filing of ITR and payment of taxes within due date, which is July 31. It has also appealed to the government to consider a reliable income-tax e-filing portal to support taxpayers effectively.
In its letter the ICAI highlighted the difficulty in accessing Form 26AS/AIS/TIS and a discrepancy between figures in the statements. Due to glitches in the income-tax e-filing portal, many taxpayers are facing difficulty in accessing Form 26AS/AIS, it said. “Sometimes there is variance in figures of the same nature in TIS and AIS. Also, joint income gets reported in the statement of both joint account holders, leading to scrutiny notices in spite of taxpayers intimating the same on time.”
It also mentioned about limited response options in AIS/TIS in the letter to the Income Tax Department. “Currently, the AIS/TIS portal provides taxpayers with a set of options to respond to the information reflected in these statements. Sometimes, these options may not be adequate to accurately capture the taxpayer’s specific situation or response.”
Many taxpayers have reported that even after updating their responses in the AIS, the corresponding changes do not appear in the TIS promptly.
Technical glitches on Ute Income-tax e-filing Portal
There are some technical glitches in the income tax e-filing portal such as continuous buffering due to which there is difficulty in completing the form filling, the ICAI wrote.
There are also instances of mismatch in pre-filled data in the income-tax return and the salary, interest income, TDS etc. as per Form 26AS, according to ICAI.
