ITR filing deadline extended yet again

• The deadline for filing income tax returns (ITR) in India has been extended from July 31 to August 31.
• This is the first time that there are penalties in play for filing a late ITR.
  
• The extension of ITR deadlines is a repeated trend in India.

It has, more or less, become a trend of the Income Tax department to extend the deadline on filing income tax returns (ITR). This year the original deadline July 31 had been extended to August 31.


In the past, when such incidents took place, the government at least offered an explanation as to why. Just last year it was due to the fact that the PAN and Aadhaar cards hadn’t been linked yet. The year before that it was a strike followed by a holiday.

In fact, in 2015, the deadline was extended twice.The first time it was due to the fact that forms had changed and the second time was due to the slowdown of e-services.

There was some confusion over what the Finance Ministry means by ‘said categories’ without specifying any categories whatsoever. But consensus dictates that the same categories of taxpayers that had to file their returns by July 31, will now be able to do so till August 31.

Enforcing deadlines

Until last year, there wasn’t any penalty issued for filing an ITR late but for 2018-19, there’s a new addition to the Income Tax Act. Section 234F states that in due dates are violated than an individual would have to pay a fine of up to Rs 10,000.

That being said, if an individual’s income is less than Rs 500,000, if a late fine is incurred it won’t be anymore than Rs 1,000.