You may get some more time to file your income tax returns in the current assessment year. The regular deadline of July 31 is expected to be pushed back this year on account of the recent changes introduced in Form 16, the Salary TDS Certificate, and Form 24Q (Salary TDS Return).
"The CBDT has extended the due date of filing of Form 24Q, i.e., TDS return in respect of salary for the financial year 2018-19 from May 31, 2019 to June 30, 2019," Naveen Wadhwa, chartered accountant and manager, Taxmann, told The Economic Times. He added that the due date was extended considering the latest changes made by the tax department in Form 24Q and to redress genuine hardship of employers in timely filing of TDS return in revised format of Form 24Q.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) had also recently issued a notification extending the deadline for employers to issue Form 16 to their employees. "Every employer is required to issue Form 16 to his employee within 15 days of the due date of filing of TDS return," said Wadhwa. Since the latter was extended to June 30, the due date of issue of Form 16 has also been extended by 10 days to July 10.
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In light of the above, since employees would only get 21 days to file their returns - which may not be time enough for many tax payers - the government may step in to give them a breather by postponing July 31 deadline. Let's not forget that as per the changed rules notified under Section 234F of the Income Tax Act, which came into effect in assessment year 2018-19, late filing of the ITR now incurs a maximum penalty of Rs 10,000.
In order to align the TDS certificate format with recently notified ITR forms applicable for assessment year 2019-20, in April the CBDT had notified the Income-Tax (3rd Amendment) Rules, 2019, to introduce changes in Form 16 and Form 24Q with effect from May 12, 2019. According to Cleartax, Part B of Form 16, which provides details of salary paid and other income, has been modified and standardised asking for more details about the allowances exempt under section 10 and deductions allowed to employees under Chapter VI-A of the Income Tax Act. In the new forms, employers have to furnish the amount of allowance against the ear-marked fields such as leave travel concession exempt under section 10(5), leave encashment under section 10(10AA) and house rent allowance under section 10(13A).
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This won't be the first time that the deadline for filing ITRs gets postponed. In the past, extensions were granted on account of PAN-Aadhaar seeding, the income tax e-filing website going down due to heavy rush and once even on account of a massive power outage in North India on the last day of filing.
The tax department has made it mandatory for the employer to download and issue Part-B of Form-16 from the TRACES portal only. "A typical salaried person, without any other source of income, should file ITR-1 provided his income is less than Rs 50 lakh in FY 2018-19. Individuals with a salary income of more than Rs 50 lakh need to use form ITR-2 this year," Archit Gupta, founder and CEO, ClearTax, told India Today. Individuals who have one house property can use ITR-1 while those with have more than one house property can choose ITR-2. On the other hand, a self-employed individual will have to file ITR using the ITR-3 or ITR-4 form, depending on the type of income in FY 2018-19.
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(Edited by Sushmita Choudhury Agarwal)