ITR Filing Deadline Extension: Will Tax Department extend the July 31 ITR deadline for FY 2023-24

The Income Tax Department has recommended taxpayers to file their income tax returns for the financial year 2023-24 by July 31, 2024.

According to a source, the Income Tax Department has issued a public alert on incorrect information released in the media about the extension of the ITR filing deadline. The department has said that this is incorrect and that the deadline for filing the ITR for FY2023-24 is July 31, 2024.

Will ITR filing deadline for FY 2023-24 be extended?

According to previous years, it is doubtful that the ITR filing deadline will be extended this year, as over 5 crore ITRs for AY 2024-25 had already been filed as of July 26th, compared to July 27th last year, the report stated. By July 31, 2023, 6.77 crore income tax returns (ITRs) had been filed, and current figures are projected to surpass prior ones this year.

Despite several technical challenges on the e-filing portal, such as difficulty with Aadhaar-based OTP authentication, poor page loading, and upload errors, the deadline is unlikely to be extended unless there is a severe technical fault with the website.

The All-India Federation of Tax Practitioners (AIFTP) requested the CBDT to extend the deadline for filing Income Tax returns for the assessment year 2024-25 by one month, to August 31, pointing to the impact of floods and landslides on tax return filings in several states, as well as ongoing issues with the Income Tax portal and software, and time-consuming processes for paying self-assessment tax.

With only a few hours till this year’s ITR filing deadline, tax filers are still experiencing difficulty with the e-filing facility. The CBDT chairman claimed that they are working closely with their service providers Infosys, IBM, and Hitachi to resolve the issues and have been guaranteed that the website will function properly till the day out.