The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has proposed a merging of all Income Tax Return (ITR) forms except ITR 7 (applicable to charitable trusts, and Non-Profit Organizations-NPOs) in order to introduce a user-friendly common ITR form for taxpayers for saving their time.
- In this regard, CBDT has issued a draft proposal on November 1, 2022 for stakeholder comments by December 15, 2022.
- However, the current ITR 1 (Salaried individuals) and ITR 4 (Presumptive tax regime) will continue, and will be optional with the proposed common ITR form.
The Current Process:
At present, taxpayers are required to file their income tax returns in form ITR 1 to ITR 7 as per their legal classification and income slab. They are in the designated forms wherein the taxpayer is mandatorily required to go through all the schedules, whether that particular schedule is applicable or not. This process takes time and creates avoidable difficulties for taxpayers.
- On the other hand, in the proposed common ITR form taxpayers will not be required to see the schedules that do not apply to them.
As per the draft proposal issued by the CBDT, the proposed common ITR form will have the following features:
i.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.
ii.It will have a separate head for disclosure of income from virtual digital assets.
iii.The ITR is customized for the taxpayers with applicable schedules based on certain questions answered by the taxpayers (wizard questions).
iv.Instructions will assist in the filing of the return.
v.Each row contains one distinct value only to simplify the return filing process.
vi.Only applicable fields of the schedule will be visible and wherever necessary, the set of fields will appear more than once.
Current ITR Forms:
There are following seven kinds of ITR forms for different categories of taxpayers:
i.ITR Form 1 (Sahaj) is for small and medium taxpayers. It is filed by individuals who have an income up to Rs 50 lakh, with earnings from salary, one house property/ other sources (interest etc).
ii.ITR-2 is filed by people with income from residential property.
iii.ITR-3 is for people who have income as profits from business/ profession.
iv.ITR-4 (Sugam) is filed by individuals, Hindu Undivided Families (HUFs) and firms with total income up to Rs 50 lakh from business and profession.
v.ITR-5 is for Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs).
vi.ITR-6 is for businesses.
vii.ITR-7 is filed by trusts and NPOs.
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Recent Related News:
i.In July 2022, the Federal Bank had partnered with the Central Board of direct taxes (CBDT) to assist taxpayers in making their payments through the e-pay tax facility in the e-filing portal of the income tax.
ii.The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) annually celebrates Income Tax Day (also known as Aaykar Diwas) on 24 July to commemorate the introduction of income tax in India. The year 2022 marked the 162nd anniversary of Income Tax Day in India.
About Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT):
It is a part of the Department of Revenue under the Ministry of Finance.
Chairman– Nitin Gupta
Headquarters– New Delhi, Delhi
