Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court, following a writ petition filed by the Income Tax Bar Association, has directed the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) to extend the due date for filing Income Tax Returns (ITR) for the financial year 2024-25 to November 30, 2025. The court observed that while the date for filing tax audit reports was extended to October 31, it is essential to maintain a gap of one month between the tax audit report filing and ITR filing, as per the provisions of the Income Tax Act.
A bench of judges, Pranav Trivedi and Bhargava Kariya noted that the date for filing tax audit report was extended to October 31, but the CBDT hadn’t extended the deadline for ITR returns as per the Income Tax Act.
“We direct the respondent board to issue a circular extending the due date of filing of return upto November 30, 2025 for assessee’s who are required to file audit report… CBDT to issue such circular forthwith and file compliance report on or before October 16,” the court said in its order.
“Specified date means the date one month prior to the due date for furnishing a return of income under Section 139(1). Therefore, there is no question of extending the specified date unless and until the due date of furnishing return of income under Section 139(1) is extended. In other words if specified date is extended…the due date has to be extended accordingly by one month from the date of extension of the specified date,” the court added.
The petitioners argued that the one-month gap was needed to ensure proper tax compliance, as large companies with complex audit cases need time to file their ITRs after the audit report to ensure there aren’t any errors in the returns.
This isn’t an isolated case. Similar petitions have been filed in various high courts across the country, with the Rajasthan High Court and Karnataka High Court both asking the CBDT to push the ITR filing deadline.
