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The Income-Tax Department has collected over ₹4,000 crore just in December as self-assessment tax belying allegations of the high number of ‘NIL’ Income Tax Return filings before the due date to avoid paying the late fee and get the ITR revised later.
The IT law allows revision of returns filed on or before the due date without any late fee or penalty.
The Department announced that it had received 5.89 crore ITRs for Assessment Year 2021-22 (FY 2020-21) by the closing of the extended due date for filing — December 31.
Revenue Secretary Tarun Bajaj has ruled out any further extension of the due date for individuals and assesses whose accounts are not audited.
Revising the returns
Tax professionals allege that a significant set of the high number of ITRs reported by the Department are ‘NIL’ returns, which will be revised subsequently.
But officials have rejected this claim. “It should not be true as we have also got more than ₹4,000 crore in self-assessment tax in December,” a senior Finance Ministry official told BusinessLine.
Sujit Bangar, Founder of Taxbuddy.com, says that “If you don’t revise your returns at the earliest, you could get a notice for defective return. Therefore, it’s best to revise returns at the earliest.”
“Many taxpayers could not address all the issues in AIS by the last date. So, they need to go through the AIS data carefully and ensure missed points are reported in revised income tax return,” he said.
According to Bangar, as the due date for filing ITR was extended to December 31, revised returns can be filed till March 31 or before the assessment whichever is earlier.
“Taxpayers should not wait till 31st March 31. It’s better revise at earliest date possible to correct error,” he said.
ITR numbers
The Income Tax Department said that of the 5.89 crore ITRs filed for AY 2021-22 as on December 31, 49.6 per cent are ITR1 (2.92 crore), 9.3 per cent ITR2 (54.8 lakh), 12.1 per cent ITR3 (71.05 lakh), 27.2 per cent ITR4 (1.60 crore), 1.3 per cent ITR5 (7.66 lakh), 0.43 per cent ITR6 (2.58 lakh) and 0.11 per cent ITR7 (0.67 lakh).
Over 45.7 per cent of these returns were filed using the online ITR form on the portal while the balance was uploaded using the ITR created via offline software utilities.
In comparison, as on January 10, 2021 (the extended due date for ITRs for AY 2020-21), the total number of ITRs filed was 5.95 crore with 31.05 lakh ITRs filed on the last day against over 46.11 lakh ITRs filed on the last day this year, the Department said.
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