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All Odisha Tax Advocates Association has issued a notice to CBDT for refusing to extend the due date of filing returns of the assessees of Odisha for the Assessment Year: 2021-2022 after 31/12/2021 and imposing late filing fee under section 234F of the Income Tax Act, 1961 in spite of many technical glitches in the new portal of the Income Tax Department.

All Odisha Tax Advocates Association

Dated: 04th day of January, 2022

To
Shri J.B. Mohapatra, IRS
Hon’ble Chairman, Central Board of Direct Taxes,
North Block, New Delhi-110001

Sub:- Legal Notice on behalf of All Odisha Tax Advocates Association, Regd. Office:-CTBA Centre, Sector-2, CDA, Markat Nagar, Cuttack-753014 represented through its General Secretary Shri Bibekananda Mohanti for refusing to extend the due date of filing returns of the assessees of Odisha for the Assessment Year:2021-2022 after 31/12/2021 and imposing late filing fee u/s.234F of the I.T.Act,1961 in spite of many technical glitches in the new portal of the Income Tax Department.

Ref:- Our request letter dated-27/12/2021 to extend due date and not to impose late filing fee.

Respected Sir,

In inviting a reference to the subject cited above we the members of All Odisha Tax Advocates Association, a premier State level Association of Tax Advocates of Odisha, want to draw your immediate attention as under:-

1. That as per Circular No.17 of the CBDT dated:-09/09/2021 the due date for filing of Income Tax returns of the assessees was extended to 31/12/2021 and submission of Tax Audit Reports to 15/01/2022 considering the difficulties of the assessees due to second surge of pandemic COVID-19 and glitches in the new Income Tax portal.

2. That although the old portal of the Income Tax Department was working flawlessly and it was user friendly, but the Union Finance Ministry entrusted M/s Infosys Ltd to develop the new portal after the beginning of the Assessment Year:2021-2022.

3. That as per earlier directions of the Hon’ble High Courts CBDT failed to upload schema of the returns forms in the portal in time.

4. That the new portal has been so designed that it takes maximum time to fill up the return forms and upload the same. In certain occasions, the portal was hanged in between filling the ITR forms, which caused inconveniences to the assessees for which the assessees as well as Tax Professionals faced a lot of difficulties in filing those forms by 31/12/2021.

Legal Notice issued to CBDT for not extending ITR Due Date

5. That in the request letter dated-27/12/2021 the aforesaid Association has raised other points of sufferings of the assessees of Odisha viz:- facing frequent cyclones, rain due to low pressure, poor internet and electricity facility, assessees as well as professionals suffering from COVID-19, non-cooperation from banks in getting transaction statements etc.

6. That before filing the return of income it takes more time to verify the Form No.26-AS, AIS and TIS etc. Pertinent to mention here that in most of the cases, the AIS data were not made available to be downloaded due to server issues. Further, in most of the cases, there is a lot of mismatch in the information reported in TIS as compared to the actual details and the same reported in Form No.26AS as well. This has resulted an additional burden on the taxpayers to reconcile the differences before filing the ITRs in order to ensure that there would be no further notices, unwarranted adjustments u/s.143(1) of the Act and unnecessary hassles post filing of the Income Tax Returns.

7. That the technical glitches in the new portal was the top most woo of the Tax Professionals as well as assesssees to file their return of income in time.

8. That the Government has no kiosks or helpdesks etc. to facilitate the assessees to file their return of income and at the same time the assessees were also not educated by the Government to file their return of income online.

9. That the return forms have been made so complicated that it took hours to fill up the same by the Tax Professionals. The condition was even more dreadful in cases of the assesses who wanted to file their own ITRs.

10. That the Infosys Ltd has developed the portal in such a new design so that at times the screen page vanishes without any reason and the technical glitches are that it cannot be described in words.

11. That the assessees from various parts of India including the State of Odisha requested your Honour to extend the due date in order to file the returns of income of the assessees within time allowed under the statute, but the same were not accepted.

12. That to the utter surprise, on the eve of 31st December, 2021, the Learned Principal Secretary (Revenue), Union Ministry of Finance in a Press Meet has intimated the tax payer community that time limit for filing the ITRs would not be extended.

13. That many assessees have submitted some of the papers with the Tax Professionals but their returns could not be filed in time for which the said Professionals will be paying late filing fee (u/s. 234F) to the Government on behalf of the assessees.

14. That there is an urgent need to extend the dates of filling Returns and the Tax Audit Reports to a suitable date so as to allow reasonable time for the Tax Payers and Professionals to comply with the mandatory statutory compliances.

15. That it is needless to mention here that, the levy of late filing fees on the assessees u/s.234F needs to be postponed till 31st March, 2022 in the above circumstances.

Thus being aggrieved the All Odisha Tax Advocates Association is going to file a Public Interest Litigation petition before the Hon’ble High Court of Orissa in order to safe guard the interest of the assessees as well as the Tax Professionals of Odisha.

Please take notice that after receipt of this letter if your good office doesn’t extend the due date for filing of Income Tax Returns as well as Tax Audit Reports to 31/03/2022, then our Association would be constrained to file PIL in the Hon’ble High Court of Orissa with a prayer to direct you to extend the due date for filing of return and Tax Audit Reports for the Assessment Year: 2021-2022 and return back the late filing fees collected u/s.234F of the Act. The entire cost of litigation would also be borne by you.

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully,

For & on behalf of All Odisha Tax Advocates Association
(Natabar Panda)
Working Secretary

C.C:- (1) Hon’ble Union Minister of Finance, North Block, New Delhi-110001, (2) Hon’ble Principal Chief Commissioner of income Tax, Odisha Region, Bhubaneswar-751007 for information and necessary action.

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19 Comments

  1. Suresh kumar jain says:

    Why only Odisha association,Why not there is unity among all associations at country level to kiln with them in filing pIL.why tax payers associations are not Involved and motivated.Till we will not unite our hardships will not be heard by this deaf,dumb and unpractical Govt and beaurocrats.By harrasing genuine tax payers taxes are collected as at the point of gun and distributed to those who are liabilities to this country.So much tax collection is not required,if public money is used properly for the cause of nation .

  2. Uttam Kumar Bose says:

    Earlier IT Portal was user friendly than the current developed portal. In the current portal it is is much more time taking f. Further the new portal came into effect in the month of October,2021 particularly ITR 5 and ITR 6. Still some problems are fecing by us.

  3. CA Dinesh Deswal says:

    Many glitch accepted by the Income Tax web manager, rectify by them after 31st December e.g. addition of legal hear.

    I can show the example of technical glitch which was accepted by webmanager, and assessee have to pay next month interest u/s 234A. Very poor management, assessee suffer due to website changed.

    Govt. not accepting its management failure and collect more money from assessee.

    I doubt on democracy.

  4. R K Bansal says:

    Even the Form 3CEB is not working.
    There is no response at the Portal after the assessee rejected the 3CB-3CD for so many days.
    Besides that you file the Audit report but postal does not respone on the site of assessee

  5. knreddy says:

    My experience with ITR2 is that I started filling from 30.12.2021 there was issue with online ias t was not saving at intermediate of schedule even after clicking save button and getting logged off unexpectedly even after opting for time extension.

    So I have took offline route ( offline app is great , interface similar to online) and completed by 31.12.2021 but the their server / speed had survived later known rush excluding lunch hour server non availability. Though it identified almost all my income from salary, interest from bank, dividends , I was required to manually select the quarter of the dividend before paying tax advance

  6. Raman Krishnan says:

    There shall be no filing of ITR for income upto 5 lakh. It would be a great relief especially for older senior citizens to move around freely without the stess of filing, chasing on notification and helpers. This exemption is nothing in today’s cost of living.

  7. Sridhar says:

    The genuine tax payers are harassed, inconvenienced and penalised to the maximum for the fault of Infosys – this Company goes Scot free despite its utter failures including GST portal.
    This is nothing but tax terrorism

  8. chintalapudi someswrarao says:

    The request to extend the last may be considered as some of genuine tax payers have been depending on Consultants for filing tax returns and we’re expecting it would be filed at least on 31st Dec21.But the consultants could not file due to targe time required for uploading large data like security market transactions etc.

  9. Kammy Singh says:

    As mentioned in the petition the issues of concern. I would assume majority of assessee’s have no tax liabilities. The glitches and covid issues caused delayed of filing ITR. It appropriate to allow filing up to 31 March 2022 without penalty. And
    Penalty on late filing that might have been paid to be refunded when there is no liability to pay taxes.

  10. SRINIVAS PANGANTI says:

    Earlier due date was 31st July and extended by 4 months what else you require for incompetence of ignoring to file returns timely

  11. Jayant L Aasher says:

    Even interest under Section 234A has been charged in certain cases though the return was filed within due date.
    Old IT site was much much better.

  12. Kedar nath Agrawal says:

    True. The Dictatorship of Government is much bigger than your Protest Letter. You must cover important legal points more. 1. There must be a pannel of Tax officers having many thousands knowledgeable officers Who legally reply the questions raised by More than 5 crores Tax payers and Lacks of Chartered Accountants all over India and the replies given by them should be legal bindings on Department. There should be universal email ids for these. Department has left all the works on automated software system and Call centers. No Justice is available. 2. Department must be brought under Consumer Forum Act. 3. Annual information system should be permanently withdrawal. Despite of Roll Back Department is issuing Notices for Mismatch. Biggest Fault in CDSL Short Term Share sales and Purchases. Over 200 crores entries are wrongly reported. And Dictator Finance Minister and Prime Minister wants Tax payers to modify it. Have you seen modification columns. If I appoint a CA for it even then modification will take months of time and will not be possible to correct. Share sales figures details like date and quantity and rate and gross sale value and purchase details and FMV and indexed cost per shares. If you have only 2,000- entries in a year otherwise these are lacks of entries for many one. Biggest questions must be asked by High court that why the Errors of CDSL the tax payers should suffer.

  13. R K SATPATHY says:

    Although my Bank account added more than 5 years ago both prevalidated & Evc enabled in IT portal I couldn’t file my return till now as it asks to add a valid bank account before validation. So I do support your demand for extension of last date to 31st March 2022 & to correct the glitches in the new Portal as soon as possible.

  14. Md Sadeque Ali Biswas says:

    The previous itr portal was much more user friendly. Replacing it was not only unnecessary but a blunder. The assesses are suffering for this but finance department has no concern.

  15. Harish kumar khatri says:

    Yes, there would not be any deadline to file ITR except 31st March every year without late fee. After 31st March no ITR for that Assessment Year would be filed. Late fee is a queshi criminal action.

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