The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has extended the due date for filing income tax returns to 31st August 2018 from this July 31st.
As the due date has been coming closer, the Board had received several requests from the tax practitioners body and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) requesting a due date extension due to several reasons.
As per reports, over 1.46 crore income tax returns have been filed so far, of which 90.8 lakh have been filed by individuals with total income up to Rs 50 lakh.
As per data released by the department, a total of over 7.94 lakh tax returns were alone filed on July 16, of which over 5.26 lakh was ITR-1 or Sahaj.
Since there are penal consequences in delay in filing tax returns, the income tax department is under pressure to grant some more time to the taxpayers. Recently, the format of tax returns as well as in the tax deducted at source (TDS) certificates issued by employers and the TDS returns to be filed by employers had been changed recently.
The tax department usually allows an extension for a few days if the public faces any difficulty in meeting the deadline and a longer extension for assessees in states in case there are exceptional events like a natural calamity.
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