Sudhir Halakhandi – [2025] 174 taxmann.com 963 (Article)
The Government has notified almost all Income Tax Return (ITR) forms applicable to Individual Taxpayers for the financial year 2024–25 (assessment year 2025–26), yet taxpayers are still unable to file their returns for this period. This is not due to a lack of preparedness on the parts of Taxpayers or professionals, but because the Income Tax Department has not yet released the e-filing utilities for these forms for the Assessment year 2025-26.
Even if the reason for this delay is that the government notified the income tax return forms late, the taxpayers have nothing to do with it. It is the government’s responsibility to notify the return forms on time, and immediately thereafter, the related utility should be made available. Proper coordination between the law-making authority and the technology teams is essential—just as it was in the previous financial year 2023-24.
There are certain taxpayers whose returns are unaffected by AIS (Annual Information Statement), TIS, or TDS/TCS data. Their incomes are simple, straightforward, and self-verifiable — such as pensioners, senior citizens with fixed income, or salaried individuals. Even so, they are forced to wait for the portal utility to become available.
Some taxpayers file returns under presumptive taxation by declaring a fixed percentage of their turnover – and if no TDS has been deducted from any source, their filing is also being delayed solely due to the unavailability of the utility.
The situation becomes more serious when it involves taxpayers who need to file returns early — for example, those applying for visas or planning international travel, where embassies often require both current and previous year’s ITRs. Similarly, home loans or education loans from banks also require ITRs as income proof.
These individuals aim to fulfill their tax obligations well in time, but they too are caught in the collective waiting of this technical delay, even when their tax cases are quite simple.
Here one thing should be noted here that our country India is a global leader in Information Technology and runs one of the largest digital tax portals in the world. Such delays not only reflect technical inefficiencies but also raise concerns about the digital image of the nation.
See is there any reason for this delay? It may be technical or any other valid reason but it is not known to the taxpayers yet but here one point should be noted here that for the immediate previous year i.e. Financial Year 2023–24, these utilities were made available by mid-April, allowing many taxpayers to file on time. This year, even by the end of May, the utilities have not been released — which is both surprising and worrisome.
One more important point to note here is that the due date for filing a regular income tax return is 31st July. If the return is not filed by this date, a late fee is levied. Counting from 1st April, a taxpayer ideally gets four months to file the return. However, due to the delay in the release of the utility, this window is now reduced to merely two months. It should also be noted that most returns in our country are filed through professionals. As the deadline approaches, the number of returns being prepared and filed increases significantly, putting extra pressure on both the system and the professionals. Many times, the system even crashes due to this overload. If regular returns are allowed to be filed during this period, at least some burden on both the system and professionals—who are currently idle due to the absence of the utility—would be reduced. Therefore, timely release of the utility is essential.”
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