Rajasthan High Court directs CBDT to extend tax audit report filing deadline to Oct 31

Jodhpur, Sep 24 (PTI) The Rajasthan High Court's Jodhpur bench, in an interim order, directed the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) to extend the last date for filing Tax Audit reports to October 31.

Hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by the Jodhpur Tax Bar Association regarding the flaws in the Income Tax portal on Wednesday, a division bench of Justice PS Bhati and Justice Bipin Gupta directed the CBDT to issue a notification intimating the extension and listed the matter for next hearing on October 27.

The counsel for the petitioner association submitted to the court that large firms, trusts, companies, and traders are required to complete their annual audits by September 30, and now only a few days are left.

Every year, around 40 lakh audit reports are filed across the country before the deadline. As of September 23, only about 4 lakh audit reports have been submitted nationwide, which means that filing 36 lakh audit reports in less than a week is impossible. Not only tax professionals but also business owners across the country have been continuously demanding an extension of the deadline, the petitioner association argued, while citing similar petitions in other parts of the country.

The petitioner also submitted that the utility for filing the Tax Audit Report was released on July 18, and major changes were made to it on August 14, while the statutory due date remains September 30, thus leaving the taxpayers with only 47 days, whereas under the law, they should have been given 183 days.

In the PIL filed under the leadership of Association President Ajay Soni, a demand has also been made to either extend the due dates for filing the Tax Audit Report and Income Tax Returns or to allow physical filing of the same.

Referring to the ongoing festive season, Soni said that instead of focusing on customers during the festive season, traders are busy managing business accounts and asked how millions of audits can be completed in just 10 days? The government should consider this issue, but since that did not happen despite our raising the issue, a PIL had to be filed in the High Court as the only resort, he added. PTI CORR BAL BAL