Income tax department itself: - First of all, income tax department is also lazy in getting returns timely. Mostly income tax department doesn’t issue the new income tax return form and the related instructions timely which only cause the late of income tax returns.
Data Collection: - Filing of income tax return includes gathering a lot of data from other sources. The main source to gather data is bank from which one need to take the interest certificate as well as take interest amount into account to include in income. Bank mostly credits the interest amount in late April or early in the May and in absence of interest figure, there is no possibility of filing income tax return.
Form 16:- Form 16 is the TDS deduction certificate issued by the deductor to the deductee on the deduction on salary. However, the deductor like the employer or the banks do not issue tax deduction certificate Form 16 until June after the financial year. For salaried person, it is very hard to file the tax return in the absence of Form 16, so it leads to income tax return been late.
Online data mistake: - income tax department introduces Form 26AS facility to the tax payers by which one can see the tax credit as well as refund status of the tax. But in many cases in which TDS information or interest figures are incorrect. This may be even when 16 or Form 16A is provided in original Form.
Income tax department only values the data in tax credit so one needs to make changes in the bank figures which take 1-2 months. So technology also increases the time to file the return time in some cases.
Capital Gain: - one needs to provide the figures of capital gain in the annual income tax return as well as pay the tax. But calculating capital gain is a timely process as well as consist of getting index figure which the department issue every year and late every year which leads in taking time in filing income tax returns.
Other data in return: - one needs to disclose many more things in filing income tax return other than giving figures of income from different heads. Like one need to provide details of major expenditure in the financial year. So collecting all these data only consume time and one cannot imagine filing the income tax return in the first week of April.
Refunds: - one feels that if income tax return filing is early, he will get the refund early. But the truth is just opposite. One can see the refund pending list of income tax and one can easily understand this truth. So if everything is ready, people think why should be early when the refund will come late.
So for getting income tax return in time, the department needs to change their system first and then look to the tax payers about it.
