If you have already received a warning for not filing the income tax returns in due date, you will perhaps need to pay attention to it. An example of such an instance is of a director of - firm Ms Shah Time &Jewels based in Mumbai, who has been sentenced for 3 months of imprisonment on Wednesday for not filing income tax returns within the given date for the fiscal year 2014-15.
Even after the repetitive notices been sent to the firm as well as its director Paresh C Shah, for which he did not elicit any reply, the deputy commissioner of Income Tax had filed a show cause warning on November 22, 2017, looking for an clarification as to why the sanction for their provision must not be provided under the Income Tax Act. When, even that went unanswered, a complaint was filed against the director and his firm.
The Ballard Pier magistrate court vetoed Shah's defense of 'lack of knowledge' as well as held him along with his firm guilty of considered non-compliance. The court viewed that the imprisonment under the Income Tax Act was an extraordinary as well as extreme step, however was given only when it recognized deliberate failures of filing returns.
The maximum condemnation over failure to file I-T returns is up to 2 years of imprisonment. Though, as Ms Shah Time and Jewels didn’t have a poor filing returns history, Shah has been sentenced for a minimum jail-term of 3 months.
Filing of Income Tax returns on Time
It is compulsory for all the registered taxpayers to file income tax returns every single year on time, apart from for those who are above 80 years of age as well as do not have any income source.
In addition, last date of filing returns for the fiscal year 2019-20 is July 31. Besides, filing can be done via online portal as well by uploading the Form 16.