With the July 31 ITR filing deadline fast approaching, a total of 3.42 crore ITRs have been filed for the assessment year 2024-25. However, the Income Tax Bar Association (ITBA) has highlighted issues with the I-T portal’s functionality and requested the government to extend the deadline to August 31.
In a letter to the finance ministry, ITBA, established in 1947 as the oldest association for tax professionals in India, pointed out several portal issues such as slow speed, upload-related problems, non-responsive pages, and no response from UIDAI for Aadhaar-based OTP verification. The letter urged the government to:
- Instruct the technical team, vendor, and officials responsible for the portal’s maintenance to ensure it functions smoothly, as it did last year, to accommodate the increasing taxpayer base.
- Extend the due date for the assessment year 2024-25 from July 31, 2024, to August 31, 2024.
Also read: Budget 2024: 7 Expected Income Tax Benefits from Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on July 23
ITBA emphasized that taxpayers and tax professionals are working diligently with limited time left for filing returns due by July 31. They also noted that updating data in AIS and TIS has been delayed and is still ongoing.
Last year, a record high of 6.77 crore ITRs were filed by July 31, 2023, increasing to 8.18 crore by December 31, 2023. As of now, only 3.43 crore ITRs have been filed, significantly lower than last year’s numbers, which saw over 6.5 crore ITRs filed by this time. The tax practitioner attributed this drop to technical glitches.