Making Covid-19 Less Taxing

Taking into account the disruption to daily life caused by the pandemic, the Centre has announced a series of relaxations for taxpayers, investors

- Vivek Ananth

The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown life out of gear for almost everyone on the planet, be it businesses, salaried individuals or the self-employed. Taking this into account, the Centre has been announcing a series of relaxations for income-taxpayers. Other measures — such as giving moratorium on loans and allowing withdrawal of employee provident fund balance — have also been announced to ease the financial burden on individuals.

Let us take a closer look at what these relaxations mean for individuals.

Advance tax

Certain obligations under the Income Tax Act — such as payment of advance tax or depositing tax deducted at source — generally need to be completed before March 31, or in April.

As the nationwide lockdown started towards the end of March 2020, the government has given some leeway in payment of taxes in the form of advance tax and TDS by reducing the interest it will charge for delayed payment of such taxes.

For advance tax, the last date for payment for FY2019-20 (March 15, 2020) had already passed by the time the lockdown was announced. But if you have not paid up to 90 per cent of your advance tax liability by March 31, 2020, the interest charged on the balance due (under section 234B of the I-T Act) will now be at 9 per cent per annum instead of 12 per cent. This balance tax can either be paid before you file your return for 2019-20 or along with it.

Say, the total advance tax liability (after considering TDS) for 2019-20 was ₹1.5 lakh and you had only paid ₹1.2 lakh by March 15; also, you did not pay the balance ₹30,000 by March 31.