ITR filing: CBDT issues draft proposal for common ITR form for all taxpayers; know details
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has issued a draft proposal to introduce a common form for filing income tax return (ITR) by merging all the existing forms, except ITR 7. However, the current ITR 1 and ITR 4 will continue. The income tax payers will have an option to select which form they want while filing their tax returns — the proposed common ITR form or the existing form (ITR 1 or ITR 4).The proposed common ITR is aimed at ease of filing returns and reduce the time for filing the ITR by individuals and non-business-type taxpayers considerably, CBDT said.
The scheme of the proposed common ITR is as follows:
(a) Basic information (comprising parts A to E), Schedule for computation of total income (Schedule TI), Schedule for computation of tax (schedule TTI), Details of bank accounts, and a schedule for the tax payments (schedule TXP) is applicable for all the taxpayers.
(b) The ITR is customized for the taxpayers with applicable schedules based on certain questions answered by the taxpayers (wizard questions).
(c) The questions have been designed in such a manner and order that if the answer to any question is ‘no’, the other questions linked to this question will not be shown to him.
(d) Instructions have been added to assist the filing of the return containing the directions regarding the applicable schedules.
(e) The proposed ITR has been designed in such a manner that each row contains one distinct value only. This will simplify the return filing process.
(f) The utility for the ITR will be rolled out in such a manner that only applicable fields of the schedule will be visible and wherever necessary, the set of fields will appear more than once. For example, in the case of more than one house property, the schedule HP will be repeated for each property. Similarly, where the taxpayer has capital gains from the sale of shares taxable under section 112A only, applicable fields of schedule CG, relating to 112A, shall be visible to him.
Once the common ITR Form is notified, after taking into account the inputs received from stakeholders, the online utility will be released by the Income-tax Department. In such a utility, a customized ITR containing only the applicable questions and schedules will be available to the taxpayer, CBDT mentioned.
The inputs on the draft ITR may be sent electronically to the email address [email protected] with a copy to [email protected] by 15th December 2022, CBDT said.
This story originally appeared on: India Times - Author:Tax Cognition
