Income Tax Return Filing Due Date May Be Extended Even Though Dept. Urges Taxpayers To File It

Even as the tax department is constantly sending reminders to taxpayers saying " Dear PAN number, Now is a good time to file Income Tax Return for AY 2021-22. File Now. Please ignore if filed.Income Tax Department", there are speculations that the ITR filing due date can be extended beyond December 31, 2021. Remember the due date to file an ITR is the deadline by which ITR can be filed without any late fee or penalty.

Here December 31, 2021 is the due date for taxpayers whose accounts are not needed to be audited.

The case of likely extension of the due date for filing ITR for FY21 is being made on the premise that for the Fy 2019-20 for which the due date was January 10, 2021, the tax department via its official twitter handle tweeted a post on January 11 as per which over 5.95 crore ITRs were filed. But now as per the data until December 15, 2021, a little over 3.59 crore ITRs were filed, signalling around 2.36 crore ITRs are yet to be filed with the deadline looming near.

More than 3.59 crore Income Tax Returns filed on new e-filing portal of Income Tax Dept till 15th December, 2021. More than 6 lakh ITRs being filed per day & increasing daily.
Secretary, Revenue & Chairman, CBDT held meeting with Infosys today on preparedness of e-filing website. pic.twitter.com/xC6KvVmfze

— Income Tax India (@IncomeTaxIndia) December 16, 2021

Also, the new income tax portal is still not very smooth in functioning and there have been reported incidents wherein taxpayers' refund is being calculated less. So, with continuing glitches, the performance of the portal shall be tested when many taxpayers will be filing their taxes simultaneously.

Other likely reasons why the government may consider extending the due date is the fear around the new Omicron variant which is fast spreading in the country. Also, if we are to consider last year's scenario, the department extended ITR filing due date thrice to last January 10, 2021.

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