Funda of Filing IT Return

Are you one of those who have not filed their income tax returns by July 31, 2009? If yes, then you must be wondering what you should do now. If you are a salaried person, you don’t have to worry about not being able to file your IT return by the last date. You can file your return on or before March 31, 2010.

As per IT department’s rules, salaried employees and professionals whose income does not need auditing are required to file their tax returns on or before July 31 every year. On the other hand, persons whose income needs to be audited have to file their returns on or before 30th September every year. But there is nothing to worry if you fail to file your tax return by the last date (31 July), provided you have paid all the taxes by the due date, in which case you can file your tax return on or before March 31 next year – that is, tax return for 2008-09 can be filed on or before March 31, 2010 without attracting any penalty. However, after this extended deadline, you may have to pay a penalty of upto Rs 5,000 to file your returns, if the assessing officer is not satisfied with the reasons for the delay. Also, if you do not file your returns by the last date (July 31) you cannot carry forward any capital losses that you may have incurred during the last financial year. But what happens when a taxpayer has neither paid tax (fully or partially) before the due date (March 31) nor filed his return before the last date (July 31)? In such a case, he will have to pay the outstanding amount of tax along with penal interest of one per cent per month of delay and hope that the assessing officer would be lenient and not impose any penalty. If a person has not filed IT return for, say, 2006-07 or earlier years, he cannot do much about it as after two years, it becomes time-barred.

Paying Your Income Tax
The deadlines discussed earlier related to the filing of IT return. But what about the deadline for paying income tax? The income tax for individuals is payable on or before the close of financial year on March 31. Of course, the salaried employees’ income tax gets deducted and deposited every month by the employer, so employees have nothing to worry about paying income tax by the deadline. Failure to pay the tax by the due date will attract interest at one per cent per month on the outstanding amount.