Taxpayers who have not yet filed their income-tax returns for Assessment Year 2026\u201327 should act before the July 31, 2026 deadline, as filing late can result in additional costs and the loss of certain tax benefits. The deadline generally applies to salaried individuals and other taxpayers whose accounts are not required to be audited and who do not have business or professional income covered by a later filing date. Taxpayers with business or professional income who are not subject to an audit generally have until August 31, 2026, while cases requiring a tax audit normally have until October 31, 2026. The return being filed relates to income earned between April 1, 2025 and March 31, 2026 and is governed by the Income-tax Act, 1961. Missing the applicable original deadline does not immediately eliminate the opportunity to file, because an eligible taxpayer can generally submit a belated return until December 31, 2026 or before completion of the assessment, whichever occurs first. However, a late-filing fee under Section 234F may apply. The fee is \u20b91,000 when the taxpayer\u2019s total income does not exceed \u20b95 lakh and \u20b95,000 in other cases. A person who was not legally required to file a return but submits one voluntarily after the deadline may not be liable for this late-filing fee merely because the return was filed late. In addition to the fee, interest under Section 234A may be charged at 1% for every month or part of a month on unpaid tax, calculated from the original due date until the return is filed. Interest related to delayed or insufficient advance-tax payments may also continue to apply under separate provisions. Filing late can prevent taxpayers from carrying forward certain losses, including eligible business losses, capital losses, speculation losses and losses from owning and maintaining racehorses. These losses generally need to be reported through a return filed within the original due date to remain available for adjustment against income in later years. House-property losses and unabsorbed depreciation are governed by different rules and may still be carried forward, subject to the applicable provisions. Missing the deadline may also affect the choice between the old and new tax regimes. The new regime is the default, and individuals without business income who want to choose the old regime are generally required to exercise that option through a return filed by the applicable due date. Taxpayers with business or professional income face additional procedural requirements, including filing Form 10-IEA within the prescribed deadline where applicable. A belated return may therefore leave the taxpayer under the default new regime even when the old regime would have produced a lower liability. Late filing can also delay the processing of a refund arising from excess TDS or advance tax, while not filing at all could result in tax-department communications where the Annual Information Statement, Form 26AS or other reporting systems show high-value transactions or income. The department may carry out an assessment using the available information if a taxpayer repeatedly fails to comply, and serious cases involving deliberate non-filing and unpaid tax can attract further legal consequences. Taxpayers who miss even the December 31 belated-return deadline may have the option of filing an updated return, known as ITR-U, within the permitted period, but this usually involves substantial additional tax. An updated return also cannot ordinarily be used to claim a new refund, increase an existing refund or reduce the tax liability already declared. Taxpayers should reconcile salary details, bank interest, capital gains, TDS, Form 16, Form 26AS and the Annual Information Statement before submission and must remember to electronically verify the return after filing. A return that is submitted but not verified within the prescribed period may be treated as invalid. Filing before the applicable deadline is therefore not merely a way to avoid a fee; it helps preserve loss-adjustment rights, tax-regime flexibility, timely refunds and a clean compliance record.
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Taxpayers who have not yet filed their income-tax returns for Assessment Year 2026\u201327 should act before the July 31, 2026 deadline, as filing late can result in additional costs and the loss of certain tax benefits. The deadline generally applies to salaried individuals and other taxpayers whose accounts are not required to be audited and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2628,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-biusinessfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/todaynewshours.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/todaynewshours.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/todaynewshours.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/todaynewshours.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/todaynewshours.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/todaynewshours.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2634,"href":"https:\/\/todaynewshours.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2633\/revisions\/2634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/todaynewshours.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/todaynewshours.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/todaynewshours.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/todaynewshours.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}