CA writes to Finance Minister Secretary requesting due date extension

A Chartered Accountant with a concern has wrote a letter to Finance Minister Secretary over critical matter related to ITR Filing and Others.

In letter he started by saying, he is a Chartered Accountant by Profession based at Chandigarh and along with serval other professional like him, he would to bring the ministry notice on some critical points.

1. Deadline of file income tax returns for non-audit cases – 31.07.2023

The deadline to file the income tax return for non-audit cases happens to be 31st July every year. So many professional bodies have made numerous requests to your ministry requesting to notify this deadline as 31st August permanently (not asking extension) for every year. There are so many legitimate reasons to this (if the ministry care to understand rather than being adamant), some of the reasons are explained below:-

a) Even if the ITR forms are released on 1st April itself, Form 16 is issued by 15th June (not 1st April) and even beyond that. Further in most of the cases there are corrections required in Form 16, which gets rectified by 15th July. Many assessees receive arrears and it is a cumbersome task to get year wise arrear details from their employers.

b) Interest certificates are issued by 15th June (not 1st April) and even beyond that.

c) Capital Gain statements are not ready by 1st April.

d) TIS & AIS keeps on updating till the 1st or 2nd week of July.

So if the ministry’s stance is that an assessee is given ample time of 4 months from 1st April to 31st July to file their income tax return, then they are absolutely wrong. Because practically they get 30-40 days only (not 4 months). To relate to this, data of ITRs filed can be checked from the month of April to July. All the ITRs are filed in the month of July only, not because assessees tend to file it in the last dates (as the ministry thinks) BUT due to all the practical circumstances as explained above.

If the ministry really wants to provide 4 months time then issuance of Form 16, AIS/TIS updation etc. should happen by 1st April, merely releasing ITR-1 from in April and boosting it is not helping anyway.

2. Remarks/Statements time to time by Ministry Officials

Time and again statements are issued by officials of the ministry boosting crores of ITRs filed. Has the ministry ever thought about how these many ITRs are filed?

Even if the deadline happened to be 15th July, you will get the same quantum of ITRs filed because in order to meet the deadline, professionals work 24×7 under a lot of stress, keeping their health & personal life at stake and their staff also have to work till midnight. Also for many professionals ITR filing is the source of their bread and butter and they can1 afford to lose clients by not filing their ITRs in time.

So if ITRs are being filed in large numbers, it is just because professionals are tirelessly working day and night just because your adamant ministry doesn’t want to shift the deadline from 31st July to 31st August.

It has become a routine habit of your ministry officials to give baseless remarks, another statement given by one of our officials -You have to sit on your laptop to file the return.

Is it really so easy? It maybe for some bureaucrats like Mr. Tarun Bajaj but for everyone else it is not. Also if ITR filing was so easy then why do most of the assessees wish to get it filed by professionals like CAs, Income Tax Lawyers.

An elected Government is for the people and should work towards making their life easy. If a 75 year old Chartered Accountants fraternity is raising some demand (to notify the deadline as 31st August) then there must be a reason for this, but your ministry thinks only they have got all the brains and know all the things (which are far from reality).

3. Are these crores of ITRs being filed by assessees themselves?

If the ministry thinks that because of the newly launched income tax portal, assessees are now filing their ITRs on their own then this myth needs to be cleared. Today also almost all of the assessees like to get it done from their CAs, take their CAs advice on some matters and then get their ITRs filed. Rather than just boosting lakhs of ITRs filed everyday, the ministry should try to imagine the quantum of work pressure in these 30-40 days and appreciate the efforts of CAs in practice whose number is very less as compared to these ITRs filed.

He hope the ministry will consider the above mentioned points from a new perspective and move towards changing the deadline from 31st July to 31st August from next year onwards and extending it to 31st August for this year.

For Official Letter Download PDF Given Below: