Fire in IT office: Taxpayers to file returns again

Nearly 150,000 salaried individual taxpayers will have to re-file their returns for the 2007-08 assessment year, as their returns went up in smoke during a recent fire in the income-tax office at Mayur Bhawan in Connaught Place.

The October 6 incident gutted the entire seventh floor. Re-filing is must for processing income tax refund claims, as well as tax payments by assessees of Range 44 and 45 of the Delhi income tax zone.

Range 44 covers employees and pensioners of public sector undertakings, while Range 45 includes employees and pensioners of schools and colleges.

Taxpayers have time till November 30 to file the returns. A notification to this effect has already been issued by the chief commissioner of income tax.

Not only are taxpayers required to file copies of the income tax return and the acknowledgment issued by the income tax department for assessment year 2007-08, they will also have to file returns for assessment year 2006-07 if they have not received tax refunds.

To make things easy for taxpayers, a representative of the PSU, school or college can file the returns in bulk. If taxpayers do not file returns, they may face difficulty in getting refunds.

The fire is also believed to have gutted documents related to recent searches of a real estate company. This is not the first time that Mayur Bhawan has been affected by fire.