Salaried persons can file Income Tax returns till March 2016

A salaried person who can’t file his ITR for financial year 2014-15 by 31 August 2015 can file it by 31 March 2016, without attracting penalty for late filing.

This year, the deadline to file income tax returns (ITR) has been extended to 31 August from 31 July.

According to income tax rules, individual has to file his income tax return (ITR) for any financial year, before 31 July (31 August for financial year 2014-15) of the subsequent year.

As usual, there are many salaried persons who can’t meet the deadline this year, too. Of course, they also list the usual reasons for not filing returns on time: some can’t login to the Income-Tax portal; some has not received the Form 16; some are too busy with their career and life to notice the deadline.

“A lot of salaried persons have not received their Form 16 this year. The delay in issuance of Form 16 on the part of us was primarily because of changes in the process relating to preparation of the Form 16,” a DDO of a government office said.

If salaried person has a source of income apart from salary, such as income from fixed deposit interest, capital gains or rental income, and if the tax liability is more than Rs.10,000, then he should has paid advance tax by 31 March 2015. If he has not done this, then he has to pay the self-assessment tax and file the ITR by 31 August 2015.

If the net advance tax due is more than Rs.10,000 other than TDS, and salaried persons do not pay this on time, a penalty of 1% (simple interest) every month of the tax amount will be levied, under sections 234(B) and (C) of the Income-tax Act, 1961.

The interest will be calculated till the end of the month in which he pays the tax. However, no penalty will be levied if he files return by 31 March 2016.

He can even file tax return by 31 March 2017. But the assessing officer can levy a penalty of Rs.5,000 under section 271F for not filing the return on time.