I-T Dept extends deadline for manual filing of forms related to foreign remittances till July 15

The Income Tax Department on Monday extended the deadline till July 15 for manual filing of forms related to foreign remittances.

As the new I-T portal faced technical issues after its launch on June 7 and users complained of glitches, the department had allowed manual filings of Form 15CA/15CB (required for foreign remittances) with banks till June 30.

"It has now been decided to extend the aforesaid date to July 15, 2021. In view thereof, taxpayers can now submit the said forms in manual format to the authorised dealers till 15th July, 2021," the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said in a statement.

As per the Income Tax Act, 1961, there is a requirement to furnish Form 15CA/15CB electronically. Presently, taxpayers upload the Form 15CA, along with the chartered accountant certificate in Form 15CB, wherever applicable, on the e-filing portal, before submitting the copy to the authorised dealer for any foreign remittances.

The CBDT has also advised authorised dealers to accept such manual forms till July 15 for the purpose of foreign remittances.

"A facility will be provided on the new e-filing portal to upload these forms at a later date for the purpose of generation of the Document Identification Number," the CBDT said.

The new portal was launched on June 7, which the tax department as well as the government said was aimed at making compliance more taxpayer-friendly. As the website continued to face glitches from the first day of its launch, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had asked Infosys -- the vendor who developed the site -- to fix the issues on priority.

In a meeting with Infosys top officials on June 15, Sitharaman had asked Infosys to address all issues without further loss of time, improve their services, redress grievances on priority as it was impacting taxpayers adversely.

Infosys officials on their part had said that they were working to fix the technical issues and that they have augmented the resources for execution of the project on the hardware as well as the application side and that some of the issues have already been identified and fixed.

For the other remaining technical issues, Infosys had assured the government that their teams were working on them and gave the expected timelines within which the issues would be resolved.

Issues such as e-proceedings, Form 15CA/15CB (used for remittances), TDS statements, DSC (Digital Signature Certificate) and viewing of past ITRs are expected to be resolved in about a week, the IT company had said during its meeting with the minister.

Stakeholders had sent more than 700 emails to the ministry detailing over 2,000 issues, including 90 unique issues/ problems, on the new portal.