The Gujarat High Court has rejected a plea in search of additional extension of the due date for the filing of revenue tax (I-T) returns by enterprises and experts covered beneath Section 44AB of the I-T Act from February 15 to March 31.
“We have concluded that we should not interfere in the matter,” the Court stated hearing a unique civil application by the All-Gujarat Federation of Tax Consultants. “In the result, bot the writ applications fail and are hereby rejected. At this stage, we may only observe that the CBDT may consider issuing an appropriate circular taking a lenient view as regards the consequences of late filing of the Tax Audit Reports as provided under Section 271B of the Act. We leave it to the better discretion of the CBDT in this regard.”
An assessee requires to be audited beneath Section 44AB if his/her annual gross turnover/receipts in organization exceed Rs 1 crore though it is Rs 50 lakh in case of experts. In case of failure to get accounts audited, the Income Tax Act section 271B prescribes that the Assessing Officer might direct that such individual shall spend, by way of penalty, a sum equal to one half per cent of the total sales, turnover or gross receipts, as the case might be, in organization, or of the gross receipts in the profession, in such prior year or years or a sum of one particular hundred fifty thousand rupees, whichever is much less.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the due dates for filing of return/tax audit have currently been extended on 3 occasions. The most current extension is from January 31 to February 15 for assesses whose accounts need to have to be audited beneath Section 44AB.
“Any further extension would adversely affect the return filing discipline and shall also cause injustice to those who have taken pains to file the return before the due date. It would also postpone the collection of revenue thereby hampering the efforts of the Government to provide relief to the poor during these Covid times,” the CBDT submitted to the Court.
The principal argument of the writ applicants was that delay in releasing the utilities for filing the Tax Audit Reports and Income Tax Returns has decreased time offered for tax consultants to file returns for customers and place pressure on their manpower.
The CBDT submitted that the adjustments brought about in the ITR by way of an update do not quantity to adding or extending the fields. It is only growing or creating adjustments in the character of the current fields to allow specific minuscule taxpayers to report appropriately which they could possibly not have been in a position to otherwise.
The Income-tax division also submitted that the quantity of returns filed this year has currently exceeded by about 6% to 5.95 crore as on January 10, 2021, compared with 5.62 crore as on August 31, 2019 (final date of return filing).