Problems in filing Incometax Returns for this year before 31st July.

The Traces Website of the Incometax Department is not working or working intermittently. This website is the one which gives the details of Incometax deducted from the assessee's income. One has to verify the figures from this website before filing the return of income as many tax deductors like banks deduct tax, issue tds certificates in Form No:16A, but do not file the tds returns. In that case tds credit will not appear in the party's account, namely AS 26 of the incometax department's tds website. In such situations one can always ask the deductor to file the return immediately.

There are several cases, where the deductors quote wrong PAN numbers leading to credit not appearing in the Party's ledger of the Incometax website. If there is such mistakes then the assessee will not be able to get credit for the tax deducted. He has to ask the deductor to rectify the tds return by filing a revised tds return, correcting the mistake.

Therefore if the Incometax department's tds web site is not working well, all the assessees are affected and I hope that the Ministry of Finance, and Board of Direct Taxes take necessary steps to set right all the problems.

Earlier the tds related issues were handled by NSDL and the government created its own web site called TRACES. It is being managed by Infosys Ltd at present.

Infosys Ltd had lot of problems when it took over from TCS the web site of the Department of Company Law Affairs. Now even the TRACES is also having the same problems.

The issue become serious when we consider that the last date for filing return of income of non audit cases fall on July 31st. If the returns are filed later, the assessee had to pay penalty and also interest under section 234A,234B,234C.