The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) is Spreading e-tax net through Notification dated 34/2013 dated 01.05.2013. E-filing of I-T returns is now mandatory for individuals, including salaried taxpayers, earning more than Rs 5 lakh taxable income during the financial year ended March 31, 2013. Earlier the same was mandatory for the Individuals having salaried Income more than 10 Lakhs
CBDT’s earlier notification that salaried Individual having Income less than 5 Lakhs need not to file Income tax returns continues to be in force. Therefore salaried Individual earning less than Rs 5 lakh and whose saving bank interest income is less than Rs 10,000 in a year will need not to file Income Tax returns. However, if an employee has switched jobs during the financial year, then this leeway of tax filing exemption is not available. Since there is a condition to get the exemption that the employer has discharged the entire tax liability through deduction of tax at source and deposited it with the government & there is very chance that either of the employers will not discharge entire tax liability due to lower tax calculations at their end.
After the above said new notification comes into force income tax return filing is mandatory for three types of individuals having salaried income:
i) Individuals having salaried income over 5 lacs
ii) Individuals having salaried income over 5 lacs & switch over their job during the financial year.
iii) Individuals having salaried income less than 5 lacs & switch over their job during the financial year.
iv) Employees having income less than over 5 lacs but having other incomes and/or having interest income over 10000.
For the first two categories of employees e-return filing is mandatory. For the other category of individuals e filing is mandatory if their total income exceeds Rs. 5 lacs. Simultaneously e-filing of I-T returns also helps speed up the process of granting refunds to taxpayers - the processing is carried out at the CPC-Bangalore.
After making the income tax return mandatory for the individuals having total income over 10 lacs, IT department needs to extend the time limit for return filing of individuals from 31st July to 31st august (for 1 Month) due to non availability of access of website of the tax department which enables e-filing of returns. As per IT department there is about 18 lacs of individuals who file return between 5 lakhs to 10 lakhs which gather more traffic in the e-return filing website in this AY. It’s a good step by the IT department to gear up the Income tax return processing but a question that how the department’s website handles such huge traffic especially during the peak return filing season.
Through the same notification, the CBDT has also introduced e-filing of tax audit reports, transfer pricing (TP) reports and Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT) certificates. Earlier, while e-filing of I-T returns was mandatory for India Inc, these reports had to be physically filed at the local tax offices.
By: CA Prasenjit Paul
Author can be reached at paul_prasenjit@yahoo.co.in
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