Thousands of people who visited the Income Tax office here on Monday to file their returns on the last day to do so had a tough time standing in long winding queues to beat the deadline, though later in the day it was extended till August 5.
The extension of deadline by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) for filing Income Tax Returns (ITRs) until August 5 came in view of the difficulties faced by taxpayers in e-filing their returns before July 31.
The Income Tax Department said it had received a spate of complaints as a number of taxpayers were not able to log on to the e-filing portal owing to excessive rush for the past few days.
Those who had come to file their returns on Monday said they missed the ease of filing ITRs they had experienced in the previous years, when special camps would be arranged towards the last week of submission of returns.
A large number of people expressed their dissatisfaction over the absence of special camps this time round.
"It was pretty convenient last year on account of setting up of special camps. The office was open even on the weekends that fell in the last week of submission," 65-year-old Jaipal Rana told IANS.
Harvinder Singh, who came to file the return on behalf of someone else, said: "The queue is moving very slowly. Apparently, there is a problem in their system and thus the verification of documents is taking too long."
For 39-year-old Praveen Kapoor, the two-hour leave he took from his office was not sufficient due to the slow verification process.
Most of the people had to wait for two-to-three hours to be through with the entire process.
People said online submission was not possible as the server was unable to process the applications. Many of the tax-payers complained about it, and were relieved to know about the extension of deadline.
Some private sector employees also raised objections to government employees being given preferred entry on displaying their official identity cards.
"Private employees had to get passes made to get entry into the Income Tax office and had to further queue up along with others for submission of income tax return," 40-year-old Mohan Gupta complained.
Since many have not linked their Aadhaar with their PAN yet, this caused further delay.
There were no separate queues for women, but the staff justified it saying that very few ladies come to file ITR.
"A separate queue for them would have needed a separate system altogether. An entire window would have been under-utilised had we organised it," a man at the helpdesk said.
--IANS
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