People face a tough time filing ITR

Neeraj Bagga
Tribune News Service
Amritsar, August 20

People are facing countless hardships while filing their annual income tax returns (ITR), thanks to tedious norms, their frequent changes and poor server connectivity. The last date for the same is August 30.

Owing to a snag in the department’s server, Aadhaar and PAN linking servers had not been working for nearly eight days. Hence, people were not able to file the returns. It was only on Monday that the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) waived off the mandatory condition of linking PAN and Aadhaar while filing returns.

Those who trade in shares, properties and mutual funds, etc, were asked to file elaborate returns under long term capital gain share and short term capital gains.

Vivek Goenka, local resident, said it was extremely tedious work as people trade in sensex and NIFTY daily. For instance, if a person trades in a share daily, then he roughly trades in over 300 shares on working days in a year. It means that he has to report all transactions depending on different companies. It was extremely laborious and needed reams of paper work. Eventually guidelines were relaxed at the fag end of July.

Last date of filing Form 16 was May 31, which was extended to June 30 due to changes made in its format. Reporting format of Form 16 was changed and many employers did not get the form even by July. SBI pensioners had to face onerous task as their Form 16 did not have TDS of the second quarter. They had to undergo difficulties.

Income Tax officials said all these decisions were concerned with the head office and they were felicitating people in filing their returns as soon as possible.