The Central Board of Direct Taxes ( CBDT ) has agreed to refund the late fee if it is wrongly charged.
In a tweet from Income Tax Department’s Official handle said that, “In a few cases, the fee under section 234F has been charged inadvertently in ITRs of Partners due to linkage of filing of Partner’s ITR with the filing of ITR of Firm. The same is being rectified suo moto to remove the late fee charged u/s 234F. The inconvenience caused is regretted”.
The clarification came in after several chartered accountants flagged the issue on social media.
In a few cases, fee under section 234F has been charged inadvertently in ITRs of Partners due to linkage of filing of Partner's ITR with the filing of ITR of Firm. The same is being rectified suo moto to remove the late fee charged u/s 234F. The inconvenience caused is regretted!
— Income Tax India (@IncomeTaxIndia) November 10, 2019
Reversal of the late fee charged under section 234F shall be considered in the computation of amount payable or refund due, as the case may be, on account of processing of the return.
As per the changed rules notified under section 234F of the Income Tax Act which came into effect from 1 April 2017, filing your ITR post the deadline, can make you liable to pay a maximum penalty of Rs 10,000.
To break this down; if you file post 31 August but before December of this year (i.e. 2019), a penalty of Rs 5000 will be levied. For returns filed after December 2019, the penalty limit will be increased to Rs 10,000. However, as a relief to small taxpayers, the IT department has stated that if your total income is not more than Rs 5 lakh, the maximum penalty levied for delay will only be Rs 1000.
For the Assessment year 2019-20, all working partner of a firm whose accounts are required to be audited were supposed to file their ITR by September 30, 2019 which was later extended to October 31. For those living in Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, the last date has been further extended to November 30.
For other individual ITR filers, the last date was July 31 but was extended to August 31. All persons including Individual, HUF, company, partnership firms, etc are liable to pay late filing fees under Section 234F, if the ITR is filed after their respective due dates. For those filing ITR after the due date but within 31 December are charged ₹5,000 and the penalty increases to ₹10,000 January onwards.
