Late Filing of Income Tax return & Misreporting – Beware

In our county many people have tendency of waiting till last to file Income Tax return and at the end some time they end up either misreporting of income or they miss the deadline. In Recent few years late filing penalty has been increased significantly.

Last date for the filing of income tax return for financial year 2019-20 is November 30, 2020. The deadline was extended by the Finance Minister in May, as part of the Covid19 relief package from July 31, 2020. And if you miss the deadline to file your ITR, or you make other mistakes like under-reporting or misreporting, you will have to pay a fine.

Penalty under section  234F of Income Tax Act for Late Filing of return: – If a tax payer fails to furnish the income tax return before deadline, he will be imposed a penalty. The penalty amount is depends on the income bracket of the tax payer as below:

*Here one thing to note is that if the total income of the tax payer is less than maximum amount of income not chargeable to tax, there will not be penalty for late filing of ITR.

Penalty U/s 270A (1) of Income Tax Act for Misreporting/ Under-reporting of income: –If a tax payer is found to have under-reported his income, he will have to pay a fine of 50% of the tax payable on under-reported income and this penalty is in addition to the tax which the person will have to pay on the misreported income

Here one thing to be noted that if Under-Reporting of Income is due to Misreporting thereof, the penalty will be 200% of the amount of tax payable on unreported income.

Misreporting of income include (1) suppression of facts (2) not recording investments in books of account (3) claiming an expenditure not substantiated by any evidence (4) recording a false entry in the books (5) not recording receipts in the books having bearing on total income (6) failure to report an international transaction etc.

Penalty U/s 271B for Non Compliance of Section 44AB (tax audit):If any taxpayer who is required to get the tax audit done but fails to do so, they will be liable to pay the least of the following penalty:

(1) 0. 5% of the total sales, turnover or gross receipts

(2) Rs. 1,50,000/-

“However, Section 273B states that there is no penalty under section 271C shall be imposable on the person or the assessee as the case may be, for any  failure referred to in the said provisions, if he proves that there was reasonable cause for the said failure.” 

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Disclaimer: The above article is prepared for understanding & study purpose. We recommend you to consult your CA or tax consultant before taking any decision&author will not be responsible for any lose due to decision take on the basis of above article.

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