By IANS
New Delhi : As July drew to a close, thousands of taxpayers joined queues across the country to file their tax returns on the last date Tuesday while some preferred to stay indoors and file via the Internet.
The July 31-deadline was for salaried people and non-audit business cases like Hindu undivided families for the 2007-08-assessment year. For Bihar, however, the last date was extended to Aug 16 in view of the floods affecting the state.
“It took some of my salaried clients just 15 minutes to file their returns this year,” said Dinkar Marla, a chartered accountant who runs his practicing firm in the capital, referring to the e-filing scheme allowed for the first time this year.
“Yesterday and today the server was slow – because I am sure lots of people had logged on – but the advantage of e-filing is you get 15 days to send the physical papers to the department. But it has also become more complicated,” Marla told IANS.
Some 37 million people had filed their income tax returns last year and the tax administration expects the numbers to go up significantly this year on the back of indicators like growing national income and expanding services sector.
The Income Tax Department’s website – incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in – allowed for e-filing of tax returns with a return preparation software that could be downloaded. “E-file your income-tax returns anytime, anywhere,” said the website.
But not all were happy as many assessees at the various collection centres found the forms complicated after the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) replaced the previous ‘Saral’ (Easy) form with an ‘ITR series’ this year.
“I was told I have to file ITR-1 and ITR-2 and was really confused about what to do. I was finally forced to go to a chartered accountant. And mind you, he did not come cheap,” said Lata Ramakrishnan, an executive with a private company in the capital.
This year, the department also introduced a new programme under which it trained around 3,700 tax return preparers (TRP) free of cost to help the general public file returns.
But even they had a tough time due to the complicated forms.
“If a person earns business income, makes capital gains and also happens to be a pensioner, I am not sure if all of us (TRPs) will know for sure which forms to fill,” said one harried TRP. “The nine-day course was just too short,” he added.
“I am a resident of Noida Sector 31 and visited the IT office in Sector 20 to file returns, and I told them that I required a TRP, they seemed to shoo me away,” said one tax payer, Sachin, in a blog posted on the IT website.