Tax audit due date: The deadline for taxpayers to submit their tax audit report was September 30, 2023. The income tax department did not extend this deadline, leaving those taxpayers who missed submission to a penalty. Not everyone has to worry about this, though!
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Only folks who have a business or a professional income above a certain amount need to have their books of accounts audited. For business people, if your total sales or income from the business is more than Rs 1 crore in a year, you need to get an audit done. But if you deal primarily in digital transactions and very little in cash, you only need an audit if your income exceeds Rs 10 crore, Economic Times reported.
If you are a professional, like a doctor or a lawyer, you need an audit only if you earn more than Rs 50 lakh in a year. However, people who have chosen the presumptive income tax scheme usually don’t need to worry about audits.
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The penalty is either 0.5 per cent of the taxpayers’ total sales, turnover, or gross receipts or Rs 1.5 lakh, whichever is less. If you are running a business and you have made late submissions, you will have to pay a bit from your earnings as a penalty.
What If You Don’t Pay the Penalty?
If you do not submit the audit report and miss paying the penalty, the I-T Department will consider it as if you have not filed your income tax return (ITR). You could get a notice from the tax department to correct your ITR. If you don’t fix your ITR in time, you might need to pay even more penalties, especially if you also have unpaid taxes, Economic Times reported.
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Any Way Out of the Penalty?
There is a bit of good news! The Assessing Officer (the tax person checking your files) can decide not to make you pay the penalty for the late audit report if you have a genuine reason for the delay. But, if that’s the case, you will still have to pay the penalty for not filing the ITR on time.
