Background

In order to make compliances easy and hassle-free for taxpayers, the income-tax portal is being revamped completely. However, in the process, the new income tax portal is facing various technical glitches resulting in difficulties in operation of the portal by the taxpayers. Taking cognisance of these difficulties reported by the taxpayers and other stakeholders in electronic filing of certain Forms under the provisions of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (IT Act) read with Income-tax Rules, 1962 (IT Rules), the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has recently issued a circular¹ to further extend the due dates for timelines of certain compliances.

We, at BDO in India, have analysed and summarised the said circular hereunder:  

Particulars	Relevant Period covered	Original Due date	Extended Due Date (Circular 12 dated 25 June 2021)	Revised due date after further extension
Quarterly statement by authorised dealers in respect of foreign remittances made in Form 15CC (It may be mentioned that due to glitches in the income tax portal, the CBDT had recently vide Circular dated 20 July 2021 extended the timelines for manual filing Form 15CA / CB till 15 Aug 2021)	1 April 2021 to 30 June 2021	15 July 2021	31 July 2021	31 August 2021
Equalisation levy statement in Form 1	FY 2020-21	30 June 2021	31 July 2021	31 August 2021
Statement of Income paid or credited by an investment fund to its unit holder (i.e., Form 64D)	FY 2020-21	15 June 2021	15 July 2021	15 September 2021
Statement of Income paid or credited by an investment fund to its unit holder (i.e., Form 64C)	FY 2020-21	30 June 2021	31 July 2021	30 September 2021
Intimation by a Pension Fund in respect of each investment made by it in India (i.e. Form 10BBB)*	1 April 2021 to 30 June 2021	31 July 2021		30 September 2021
Intimation by Sovereign Wealth Fund in respect of investments made by it in India (i.e. Form II SWF)*	1 April 2021 to 30 June 2021	31 July 2021		30 September 2021

*Timelines in these cases have been extended considering the non-availability of the utility for e-filing of these forms.

CBDT has also clarified that if any of the aforementioned Forms filed between the expiry of time limits mentioned in Circular No. 12/2021 till the date of issuance of this circular will stand regularised accordingly. 

BDO Comments

With the new income tax portal still to be fully functional, the above-mentioned extension has come as a relief to taxpayers.