A circular issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes has extended the ITR filing deadline for companies till November 30, 2021. This comes after the government today extended the income tax returns filing due date to September 30, 2021 for individuals.

Per regulations, the existing deadline for individuals who are not required to be audited and file ITR-1 or ITR-4 forms is July 31. The same for companies or firms, whose accounts need audit, is October 31. Accordingly, the deadline for issuing Form 16 by employers to employees has been extended to July 31, 2021.

Keeping to this sequence of extensions, deadline for financial institutions to furnish the Statement of Financial Transactions report has been extended to June 30 from May 31. Further, the due date for filing tax audit report and transfer pricing certificate is extended to October 31 and November 30, respectively.

The CBDT circular says that the extension of time limit for certain tax compliances has been done “to provide relief to taxpayers in view of the severe pandemic”.

While these extensions will provide some relief to tax payers in terms of compliance, experts have advised that those tax payers whose entire income liability is not discharged by TDS and advance tax and such shortfall is more than Rs 1 lakh should file their ITR within the original due date to avoid interest charge under section 234A. The interest is charged at the rate of 1 per cent every month beyond the original due date.

Source: Media Reports