Aayakar Bhawan sees more footfalls

Chennai: On the last day of filing returns for individual establishments and business firms consultants, the Aayakar Bhavan here witnessed more footfall in the special tax counters and help desks opened by the income tax officials.

“Elaborate arrangements were made at Aayakar Bhawan to assist tax payers for filing returns of Income for the Assessment Year 2016-17 and 2017-18 and the response from tax payers was encouraging for the past five days.

Many firms have paid their advance tax payments and Tax return preparers were made available to assist online filing of returns and the operations went smooth till late evening,” a source from Income Tax department said.

These facilities were available from March 26 and this year there may be an increase in taxpayers base, but the final figures will be available only after a week, sources added.

When asked about the difficulties being faced by the tax payers, sources clarified that citizens continue to face the issue of linking PAN and Aadhaar. In some cases the bank account and the Aadhar are not linked and updated, but there are provisions to help the tax payers.

Tamil Nadu now accounts for close to 32 lakh tax payers and ranks fourth when it comes to filing the tax returns.

Maharashtra, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh have more tax payers than Tamil Nadu, which is the leader in South India when it comes to the income tax paying and filing, the official said.

Meanwhile, members of public who were told that the banks would be kept open to help the tax payers mostly found the private banks remaining closed in Chennai, while a few were seen clearing their backlogs without encouraging public transactions. NEFT transactions were also delayed on Saturday as most of the private banks remained closed in Chennai.