Income Tax portal ramped up; July 31 I-T returns deadline may stay

Income Tax returns: July 31 deadline for filing I-T returns unlikely to be extended; Central Board of Direct Taxes has intervened to fix recent glitches reported on the I-T portal

The July 31 deadline for filing Income Tax (I-T) returns is unlikely to be extended. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has intervened to fix recent glitches and downtimes reported on the I-T portal by ramping up its back-end capacity to cope with a higher workload experienced this year.

Acknowledging taxpayers’ concerns about delayed generation of TDS (Tax Deduction at Source) and Form 16 certificates, and the “slowness” of the I-T portal, CBDT chairperson Ravi Agarwal told The Hindu these issues have now been resolved, and as many as 28 lakh tax returns were filed on Wednesday with no downtime reported.

“Even per-hour filings are now at an all-time high. So therefore, I think we can say with confidence that over the next six days, we should be able to take care of it. Most of the problems have been addressed and sorted out, and yesterday, there was no apparent reporting of any of these problems like downtime, and even today, there is no issue so far,” he said late Thursday afternoon.

The I-T department has seen a substantial rise in number of transactions reported this year, Mr. Agarwal said, and some of the government officials in charge of issuing such deduction certificates were also occupied with election duty, delaying some issuances.

“Then there was a report of slowness on the website and people were finding it difficult. So now, some corrective measures have been taken in terms of ramping up the hardware, and also putting those solutions in place,” the CBDT chief assured.

“There has been a 15% growth in TDS transactions and about 30% growth in third-party transactions, and that has to get populated in the pre-filled I-T forms and the corresponding TDS certificates also have to be issued. Now, what happened was that because of elections, the deductors from the government side were engaged in the election duty… so all that got delayed, and then all of a sudden, we got that filing in bulk as far as TDS statements are concerned.”

“To process those statements and convert them into TDS certificates, was taking time, and involved a lot of data. But we have been able to resolve that, and we are up to date on the issue of TDS certificates not being downloaded or not being made available,” Mr. Agarwal said.