BUDGET 2022: Is Government Planning to Charge Income Tax Return Filing Fees on ITR’s?

To summarise, there are numerous instances where an Income Tax Return [ITR] is filed but no tax is paid to the government’s treasury.

Every return filed incurs administrative costs such as acceptance, processing, communication, updating, and so on. And the income tax department does all of this without collecting a single rupee from the taxpayer.

To address this, the government may plan to introduce the concept of “Return filing fees” in the Budget-2022, with a minimum filing fee of Rs. 1000/- for individual taxpayers and Rs. 5000/- to Rs. 10,000/- for firms and companies.

As a result, the government may be able to generate a consistent revenue stream of around 3000 Cr. This will also be used as a tool to ensure quality data and returns by the department, as unnecessary return filing will be reduced once the return filing fee concept is implemented.