I-T Department's website incometaxindiafiling.gov.in is not accessible for six days from tomorrow as the portal is being upgraded to provide more facilities like help desk.

"The current e-filing website is being revamped to a new e-filing website with additional services. The current web services will remain closed with effect from November 3 to November 8, 2012," the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said.

The web services will resume from November 9, it added. "...looking to the overwhelming response from the taxpayers and growth of e-filing, a new e-filing project was conceptualised in order to take the e-services to the next generation," it said.

In order to make the new portal "live", the migration of data from the old to the new set up is in process and hence the portal will not be available for the six days to file returns, the CBDT said.

Besides companies and other entities, e-filing is compulsory for individuals having total annual income of more than Rs 10 lakh.

The CBDT said under the new e-filing setup not only income tax return (ITR) forms, but also other IT forms are proposed to be made available for electronic filing along with other web-enabled services.

"The e-filing services will resume with various new additional services like multiple mode of e-filing of returns: help desk through call centre and e-mail support, provision of online forms, pre-filing of data in forms, and availability of offline e-forms," the CBDT added.

Income Tax Department had received 1.64 crore e-returns in 2011-12, up by over 81 per cent over the previous year.

As on March 31, 2012, over 1.9 crore taxpayers had registered for e-filing.

Meanwhile, the time limit has been extended for filing the ITR-V Forms relating to income tax returns filed electronically (without digital signature) for assessment year (AY) 2010-11 and 2011-12 to December 31 or within 120 days date of uploading of the electronic return data, whichever is later.

The due date for submission of ITR-V is 120 days from the date of upload of e-return. The CBDT said that relaxation has been made since there are still a large number of e-returns relating to AY 2011-12 which had been filed but for which the ITR-V forms have not yet been received at the Centralised Processing Centre (CPC), Bengaluru.

The time limit has been extended to mitigate the hardship and grievances of taxpayers "who have been prevented by reasonable causes" to file the ITR-V form in time. Digital Signature Certificate is mandatory for firms and individuals whose accounts are required to be audited.

However, digital signature is not mandatory for individuals with annual income of over Rs 10 lakh, but they have to submit the verification of the return in Form ITR-V (Income Tax Return Verification).