New ITR: Tax payment by credit card, details of shares, MF transactions likely

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Would the Income Tax Department allow payment of tax through credit cards? If tax lawyers and consultants are to be believed, the grapevine has it that this new feature may be allowed this year.

“The word is going around that one would be able to pay taxes through credit cards soon. So far, we could pay online or using debit cards. This feature would help us greatly,” said Tapas Chakraborty, partner, Dhar and Basu, a tax consultancy firm.

Payments through Unified Payments Interface would also be allowed.

He said that often clients would request them to pay the tax on his/her behalf and they would credit the amount subsequently. “It would immediately hit our accounts. If payment through credit cards if allowed, it will give us a leeway,” said Chakraborty.

New feature

Another feature that will be unveiled by the Income Tax Department on June 7 might be disclosure of purchase and sale of equity shares and mutual funds.

“The IT Department wants to signal to the taxpayer that there is nothing that evades its vigil. So, they want the taxpayer to disclose everything upfront. All details of equity and MF transactions have to be disclosed in the new form which will have provision for all these. That’s what we have heard,” said Himadri Mukhopadhyay, former Secretary, Income Tax Bar Association.

Chakraborty, however, said all the transaction details will come pre-filled in the form.

“Since purchase of equities and MFs take place only through recognised stock exchanges and broking houses and all have PAN attached to them, these sections will come prefilled,” said Chakraborty.

Auto-filled

He emphasised that it won’t be up to the taxpayer to mention if he made capital gains in a particular year. “The details will be auto-filled.”

Kumarjit Dass, who runs a law firm, concurred with Chakraborty and Mukherjee.

 A senior official of the IT Department did not want to comment on the anticipated developments.

The IT department has already announced that it would launch a new ‘taxpayer friendly’ income tax e-filing portal- www.incometax.gov.in, on June 7.

“In preparation for this launch and for migration activities, the existing portal of the department at www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in would not be available for a brief period of six days from June 1 to 6,” said an order from the IT Department.

“The new e-filing portal (http://incometax.gov.in) is aimed at providing taxpayer convenience and a modern, seamless experience to taxpayers. It is another step by CBDT to provide ease of compliance to its taxpayers & other stakeholders,” the department tweeted from its handle.

According to the statement issued by the department on May 20, the new portal will have a number of features.

These are: 1) The new taxpayer-friendly portal shall be integrated with the immediate processing of Income Tax Returns (ITRs) to issue quick refunds to taxpayers.

2) All interactions and uploads or pending actions will be displayed on a single dashboard for follow-up action by the taxpayer.

3) Free of cost ITR preparation software available offline and online with interactive questions to help taxpayers file ITR even without any tax knowledge, with pre-filling, for minimum data entry effort.

4) New call centre for taxpayer assistance for immediate answers to taxpayer queries with FAQs, Tutorials, Videos etc.

5) All key portal functions on the desktop will be available on the mobile app which will be enabled subsequently for full access on the mobile network.

6) New online tax payment system on the new portal will be enabled subsequently with multiple new payment options using netbanking, UPI, RTGS/NEFT from any account of taxpayer in any bank, for easy payment of taxes.