As the Financial Year (FY) 2019-20 ended amid the nationwide lockdown – that was imposed to contain the spread of Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 – many last minute investors may have missed the March 31, 2020 deadline to meet their tax-saving investment target. So, the government first extended the deadline of tax-saving investments for FY 2019-20 to June 30, 2020 and then to July 31, 2020.
As tax-saving investments provide instant return in the form of taxes saved, they motivate the taxpayers to invest as much as possible to avail maximum tax savings.
Among the various tax-saving investment products, the most prominent are Public Provident Fund (PPF), Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana (SSY), National Savings Certificate (NSC), 5-year Term Deposit, Life Insurance, Unit Lined Insurance Plan (ULIP), Equity Linked Savings Scheme (ELSS) u/s 80C of the Income Tax Act that currently provides tax deduction up to Rs 1.5 lakh in a financial year as well as voluntary contribution to Tier 1 Account of National Pension System (NPS) that provides tax deduction up to Rs 50,000 in a financial year u/s 80CCD(1B), which is over and above the 80C limit.
Apart from saving taxes, the extension in the deadlines also provided the investors an opportunity to make the minimum investments to keep their accounts – like PPF, SSY, NPS etc – active, where the accounts become inactive if no investment / contribution is made in a financial year.
In case you have also availed the benefit of the deadline extension for saving taxes, here is how to show the investments made during the extended period in the Income Tax Return (ITR) Form.
A separate page, named Schedule DI has been inserted in ITR Forms to show the investments made during the extended period apart from entering the figures in the page containing Income / Investment Details.
The rows to enter the figures of investments made during extended period in Schedule DI appear only after entering the aggregate figures of investments for FY 2019-20 are entered in the Income / Investment Page.
The Column 1 and Column 2 of Schedule DI will automatically filled up with respective sections of tax-saving investments and aggregate investments made for FY 2019-20 under each section respectively. You have to enter the investments made during the extended period against each section in Column 3.
As the figures in Column 3 will contain investments made during extended period only, it may only be up to the respective aggregate figures in Column 2 (when the entire investment is made during the extended period) or less and can never exceed. If a higher figure is entered in Column 3, an alert will pop up to prevent you from doing so.
