Chartered accountants in Ludhiana gathered in strength outside the Income Tax Office at Rishi Nagar today (September 24), voicing their demand for an extension of the deadline for filing Tax Audit Reports (TAR). The deadline currently stands at September 30, 2025 and local professional bodies say that the government’s silence on their repeated appeals shows indifference to genuine hardships faced by the fraternity.

The District Taxation Bar Association (Direct Taxes) (DTBA), the Indirect Tax Consultants Association (ITCA) and the Federation of Chartered Accountants Associations (FCCA) jointly called for a symbolic “pen-down strike.” As part of the resolution, member CAs will not upload any tax audit reports until midnight of September 25 or until the Central Government formally announces an extension.

Senior office-bearers of the associations explained that their plea is rooted in extraordinary challenges this year. Audit and return forms, which should traditionally have been issued on April 1, were only notified in July. The filing of individual income tax returns kept professionals and their teams occupied until September 15, leaving barely two weeks for the voluminous audit work. This tight timeline has been compounded by persistent glitches on the income tax e-filing portal, ranging from frequent logouts and delayed OTP deliveries to failed digital signature certifications and unexplained error messages. In many cases, reports uploaded by auditors have not even been visible to taxpayers for acceptance, forcing repeated submissions and wasting precious time.

CA Vishal Garg, President of FCCA recalled that the Punjab and Haryana High Court had in 2015 directed the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) to ensure that all tax forms were notified by March 31 each year, but that ruling has yet to be followed. “Despite multiple court directions and representations by our bodies across India, the system continues to delay and disrupt. We had expected the government to take suo motu action, but nothing has been done,” he said.

Adding to this, CA Rajeev K. Sharma, President of ITCA, stressed that the profession’s demand was not about shirking responsibility but about ensuring fairness. “Chartered accountants are the backbone of the compliance framework. If the system does not provide us with adequate time and stable technology, how can we deliver justice to taxpayers? Our request is simple, give us workable deadlines and remove technical bottlenecks,” he said, drawing strong applause from his colleagues at the protest.

“We are here not as adversaries but as partners in nation-building,” said CA I. S. Khurana (President DTBA), noting that CAs work round-the-clock during filing season to meet statutory obligations. “All we ask is a reasonable timeline and a functional system. Nothing more.”

The demonstration saw active participation from prominent leaders including CA Deepak Jain (Secretary, DTBA), CA Dinesh Sharma (Ex-Regional Council Member, ICAI), CA Vikas Goyal,  CA Sahil Gupta, CA Sanjeev Bhandari and CA Pankaj Singla among others. They underlined that the movement is not merely about professional convenience but about fairness and respect for due process.

The associations warned that if no response is received from the Finance Ministry or CBDT in the coming days, they may consider intensifying their agitation. For now, Ludhiana’s tax professionals remain firm in their decision to withhold uploads as a mark of peaceful protest, hoping the government will step in to avert an avoidable crisis.

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