Individual income taxpayers will now have time till September 30 to file their return for financial year 2020-21 (assessment year 2021-22) against the earlier deadline of July 31. A few other extensions were also announced by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on Thursday in view of the disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The due date for filing the tax audit reports and transfer pricing certificates has been extended by a month till October 31 and November 30, respectively. For filing belated or revised return of income, the due date is now January 31.

Also, the deadline for issuing Form 16 by employers to employees has been extended by a month till July 15.

Narayan Jain, chairman of the representation committee of Direct Taxes Professionals Association (DTPA), welcomed the extensions even as he feels that the new deadlines need to be revisited.

“For taxpayers, whose entire income tax liability is not discharged by TDS and advance tax and such shortfall is more than Rs 1 lakh, they should try to file their ITR within the original due date to avoid the charge of interest under Section 234A,” Shailesh Kumar, partner at Nangia & Co LLP, said.

In a related development, taxpayers will not be able to avail e-filing services on the income tax portal between June 1 and June 6, as a new e-filing system is to be introduced on June 7 and the week prior to it will be used for migrating data from the legacy system.