The government on Saturday extended the deadline for filing returns by individual taxpayers for 2019-20 by a month till December 31.

For those taxpayers whose accounts need to be audited, the deadline has been extended by two months till January 31, 2021, the finance ministry said.

The due date for completion of statutory audit and presenting them in the AGM was already extended to December 31, 2020. The present extension aligns the due dates for completion of statutory audit, tax audit and transfer pricing certification to December 31, 2020. Naturally, the due date for filing of ITR for such taxpayers who are subject to such audit/certification is extended to January 31, 2021,” Shailesh Kumar, partner, Nangia & Co LLP, said.

The government had in May extended the date for filing ITR for financial year 2019-20 from July 31 to November 30.

Tax advocate Narayan Jain has welcomed the timely decision of the CBDT and said: “It was needed because of the prevailing situation of the Covid-19 pandemic.”