Late Filing Fees to Replace Discretionary Penalty u/s. 271F
Under the existing tax provisions, you can file your tax return without any penalty till the end of the assessment year.
If you delay tax filing beyond assessment year, tax officer can impose the penalty up to Rs. 5,000, which is done very rarely and fails to create any impact on taxpayers.
To tighten the noose around stubborn non-filers, in budget 2017 the government has introduced a new section 234F which levies mandatory late filing fees for non-filing the tax returns within allowed time.
As per the new provisions, if a taxpayer misses the due date of 31stJuly but files his return by 31st of December, the quantum of fee payable will be Rs. 5,000.
Further, if he delays the filing beyond 31st December, the fees will be increased to Rs. 10,000. But keeping the interest of small taxpayers (with income up to Rs. 5 lakh), in mind, the government has kept the fees much lower for them.
The late filing fees for such taxpayers will be maximum Rs. 1,000. If such taxpayer is filing his return for the first time, then I-T department will not scrutinise his ITR unless it has specific information regarding suspicious high-value transactions. The mandatory late filing fee will be applicable from A.Y. 2018-19 onwards but old penalty provision will be applicable on older assessment years.
Hopefully, this new ITR will make tax filing simpler for you. We will provide you all the necessary information regarding the form once it comes out.
However, if you still find tax filing complicated, boring and time-consuming, you can use our Income Tax Filing services to get your taxes done easily. You can file your taxes online with us within 10 minutes using our self e-filing service or just upload your Form 16 to get your taxes filed by our team of in-house tax experts.
Alternatively, you can choose to visit any of our retail offices to get face-to-face tax assistance.
