Experts demand campaign against complicated ITR

Ahmedabad, Jul 7 (UNI) Leading Tax Consultant Mukesh Patel today stressed the need for a public campaign against the complicated new Income Tax Returns introduced by the Central Government from the financial year 2006-07.

Speaking on 'New Income Tax Returns Problems and Solutions', jointly organised by the Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Income Tax Bar Association in Ahmedabad, Mr Patel said the new 23 page ITR is highly complicated and would be a colossal waste of time, energy and money to fill up this form containing number of schedules, columns and instructions.

He urged alert and conscious taxpayers of Ahmedabad, the Chamber and the Income Tax Bar Association to take a lead in the campaign to bring back status quo.

He said that even now when only three weeks have been left to file returns, the new forms are not available and the department has not opened any cell for the guidance of tax payers.

Drawing attention to many anomalies of the new form, Mr Patel said that while removing the enclosures of three pages of TDS certificates etc for the salaried class, 20 pages had been added to them. The new 23 page form containing 32 schedules, 5 subsections and more than 100 columns will take hours to be filled up as against the old 'saral' form took only five to seven minutes.

Earlier in the welcome address, K D Shah, Hon Secretary of the Chamber said that the new ITR is extemely long and complicated. The Chamber has strongly protested against this new return before the Finance Ministry through FICCI and demanded its immediate withdrawal.

UNI