FE Online Impact: CBDT swiftly resolves compatibility issues of ITR-2, ITR-3 excel utilities

The Central Board of Direct Taxes has acted quickly to resolve the problem.

After some compatibility issues in excel utilities of the Income Tax Return (ITR) Forms ITR-2 and ITR-3 were brought to the notice of the Income Tax Department, and the Financial Express Online also carried an article in this regard, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has acted quickly to resolve the problem.

Some technical issues in the utilities were preventing proper opening of the utilities in the systems having versions of MS Office older than Office 2010, making ITR-2 and ITR-3 excel utilities incompatible for Office 2007 and earlier versions.

According to CA Karan Batra, Founder and CEO of CharteredClub.com, many people use the 2007 or earlier versions of MS Office. So, about 20-25 per cent of the taxpayers, who rely on government utility, may have faced trouble while filing their return of income.

So, many salaried assessees (without income from business or profession), who are not eligible to file ITR-1 and need to file ITR-2, as well as assessees having income from business or profession, whose books of accounts needn’t be audited and need to file ITR-3, have been saved from trouble due to the swift action by the CBDT.

To make taxpayers and tax authorities aware of the situation, the Financial Express Online on August 15, 2020 had published a story – titled ‘ITR Filing: People with high salary, equity, MF investments may face compatibility issues‘ – with the exact nature of the problem that assessees may face.

The FE Online article that mentioned the compatibility issue.

Earlier on August 5, 2020, the CBDT was intimated about the issue and on the very next day on August 6, 2020, the Department replied back with information about the incompatibility issue with MS Office versions older than Office 2010, and said that they would try to find an alternative option to resolve the issue.

The swift action by the CBDT has highlighted that the statement – ‘the Income Tax Department is becoming taxpayer-friendly’ is not just a slogan, but a reality.

“The government has been acting very swiftly on ensuring that the utilities are easy to use,” said Batra, adding, “Although, the number of details asked for is increasing every year, but disclosing these additional details is not cumbersome.”