The commercial taxes department has extended the deadline for filling of VAT audit forms by two months from October 31 to December 31providing much-needed relief to the CAs(charted accountants) of a number of firms.

Also, they had been asked by the department to pay Rs 100 per day, in case of crossing the earlier existing deadline of 31 October. Now this penalty has been completely waived.

The department has issued a notification, dated 31 October in connection with extension of two months for filing of VAT audit report in Form No 41-A. It has given a big relief to the firms as they were finding it difficult to comply with the new norms as they feel that the requirements were lengthy and there were not enough CAs to do the job within the deadline.

The state government is likely to consider the demand of simplification of the form during the next session of the state assembly. While extending the deadline for the VAT audit, the department has also exempted those businessmen from filling VAT forms who deal in goods such as wheat and gram which were already tax free. Dealers having an annual turnover of Rs 10 crore or more are supposed to file the VAT audit form. There are around 8000 such dealers in the state.

A practising commercial tax consultant, R S Goyal, said, "The extension of the deadline was the need of the hour and the department has taken a right step keeping in view the genuineness of the demand."

President of Tax Practitioners Association, S N Goel, said, "There are a host of other demands that we hope the department fulfills now. Most prominent among them being the simplification of the VAT audit form, which is currently available in 26-pages and is full of queries of repetitive manner which can be avoided."

The businessmen feel that they are already burdened with the income tax audit. The VAT Audit, which was introduced during the current fiscal only was adding to the work pressure and making things difficult. SK Khandelwal, a practising CA, said, "The extension has come as a kind of comfort for the tax consultants. Forget the private firms, even the state-owned firms take our services in forms like internal audit, CAG audit whose reporting format are entirely different, hence often we face the problem of time clash, which has been eased with the department's current step."