The Central Board of Direct Taxes has made e-filing of income-tax returns mandatory for all assessees whose annual earnings exceeded Rs. 10 lakh during the fiscal 2011-12.
With July 31 being the deadline for filing returns for the fiscal ended March 31, 2012, a Finance Ministry statement on Monday said that as per the CBDT notification, e-filing was made compulsory for the assessment year 2012-13 onwards, for an individual or a Hindu Undivided Family if the total income exceeded Rs. 10 lakh.
However, digital signature won’t be mandatory and these taxpayers, can also transmit the data in the return electronically, and thereafter submit verification of the return in Form ITR-V.
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Although e-filing by these taxpayer categories was optional till 2010-11, the Income Tax Department received 1.64-crore returns in electronic format during 2011-12.
As of now, business houses with receipts of Rs. 60 lakh and professionals with an income of Rs. 15 lakh are mandatorily required to e-file their returns with digital signature.
The electronically filed returns are processed at the Centralised Processing Centre in Bangalore. The Ministry claims that e-filing is an easy, fast and secure method.
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“The processing of e-filed return is faster, and taxpayers get their refunds, if due, quickly. The Department also provides some value-added services like monitoring of refunds, viewing tax credit status (Form 26AS), e-mail and message alerts on the status of processing, and refunds.”
As on March 31, 2012, there were 19,684,592 taxpayers who had registered for e-filing.