ITR filing: Centre proposes one common income tax return form for all taxpayers

The Income Tax Department has proposed that it will introduce a common ITR by integrating all existing forms of return of income except ITR-7.

At present, taxpayers are required to furnish their Income-tax Returns in ITR-1 to ITR-7, depending upon the type of person and nature of income. ITR-7 is applicable for charitable institutions, business trusts, investment funds, etc.

In a major step towards ease of compliance CBDT proposes to introduce a common ITR by merging all existing ITRs except ITR7. Draft common ITR Form is available on https://t.co/fDrSV3LQ9P
Inputs may be sent via email at dirtpl4nic.in dirtpl1nic.in, latest by 15.12.2022. pic.twitter.com/imKz61YXmH

— Income Tax India (@IncomeTaxIndia) November 1, 2022

However, the current ITR-1 and ITR-4 will continue. This will give an option to such taxpayers to file the return either in the existing form (ITR-1 or ITR-4), or the proposed common ITR, at their convenience. The scheme of the proposed common ITR is as follows:

• 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 taxpayers.
• The ITR is customized for taxpayers with applicable schedules based on certain questions answered by the taxpayers (wizard questions).
• 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 the taxpayer.
• Instructions have been added to assist the filing of the return containing the directions regarding the applicable schedules.
• 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.
• 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.

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