March 31st is the belated filing deadline for tax filers in India who have missed the timely filing cutoff. This article outlines the implications of belated filing along with information on how to file belated Income Tax Return.

You can go to taxmunshi.com and use promotion code “MarchforTax” to file your ITR-1 & ITR-2 for no charge.

What is belated filing?

If an ITR is submitted after the due date, it is treated as belated filing

What is the due date for filing Income Tax Return?

Where the Assessee is a company: Sep 30th of the assessment year

Where the assessee is a person other than a company:

· Where accounts of the assessee are to be Audited: Sep 30th of the assessment year

· A  working partner of a firm whose accounts are required to be audited under the income tax Act or any other law: Sep 30th of the assessment year

· Any other assessee: July 31st of the assessment year

What is the due date for filing belated returns?

Income tax returns can be filed after the due date till end of assessment year (e.g. for FY 2009-2010, last date is up to 31-March-2011)

What can be the impact of filing belated ITR?

· The Assessee will be liable for penal interest under section 234 A. For example, say Reema is a salaried employee and does not file her ITR for FY 2010 by the deadline for the Assessment year, July 31^st, 2010. Instead she files her belated return in March 2011. She will be liable to pay interest on the outstanding tax amount at 1% per month for the months starting from August 2010 to March 2011.

· A penalty of Rs 5,000 may be imposed under section 271 F by the Assessing Officer if belated return is submitted after the end of the assessment year. That is if Reema does not file her ITR by March 31^st, 2011 but between April 1^st 2011 and March 31^st 2012 she may also be penalized with the additional Rs. 5000/- penalty.

· If the return of loss is submitted after the due date, a few losses cannot be carried forward.

· If the return is submitted belated, deductions allowable under certain sections will not be available.

· Late returns cannot be revised except if it is in pursuance of a notice under section 142(1)

For what reasons other than Income Tax Compliance is it necessary to file ITR?

The income tax return filed by a tax payer is not just an obligation to the nation, but also an important permanent document that can be used for various other purposes like assessing your credit worthiness, obtaining loans from banks, employment, applying for visa for foreign visits and the likes.

How can I file after the due date?

The process of filing income tax returns after the due date is just like filing before the due date. One can eFile on the ITD website or more easily prepare ITR by going to an eFiling website likewww.TaxMunshi.com , registering and preparing the belated return in a few simple steps. TaxMunshi.com is a certified eReturn Intermediary and assists you to prepare your ITR via a question answer based interview. It calculates your taxes and refunds and validates your data. Since it is integrated with the Income Tax Department, your data is transmitted to ITD and there is no need to deal with unwieldy XML files in order to eFile your return.

About TaxMunshi

TaxMunshi™ offers a suite of online income tax preparation and filing services for salaried & self employed professionals, employers and tax preparers to enables efficient, easy and secure tax filing at a very reasonable price. TaxMunshi™ has been developed by Paisaa™ Innovative Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (www.paisaa.in) , a company that is dedicated to “innovate to simplify” the life of consumers by establishing secure, easy and affordable services to eliminate day to day frustrations from existing complicated and cumbersome processes.

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