Government to modify new income tax return forms

Gov­ern­ment has decid­ed to “mod­i­fy” the new Income Tax Return (ITR) forms in wake of con­cerns raised over them. The Income Tax depart­ment had noti­fied new income tax return forms on April 15.

In the new ITR‑2, Finance Min­is­ter Arun Jait­ley said, the infor­ma­tion relat­ing to for­eign trav­el which has been sought to be cap­tured is as per the rec­om­men­da­tion of Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tion Team on Black Mon­ey con­sti­tut­ed as per direc­tions of the Supreme Court.

Such infor­ma­tion can help in devel­op­ing risk pro­files for detec­tion of eva­sion of tax, he said in the writ­ten reply to the Rajya Sab­ha, adding that these details are not required in ITR‑1 or ITR-4S which is filed by major­i­ty of indi­vid­ual taxpayers.

The gov­ern­ment has received rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the new return forms noti­fied on April 15, 2015 and tak­ing into account con­cerns raised, the gov­ern­ment has decid­ed to mod­i­fy the return forms,” Jait­ley said.

ITR‑1 (SAHAJ) is for indi­vid­u­als hav­ing income from salary/one house property/income from oth­er sources. ITR‑2 is for indi­vid­u­als and HUFs not hav­ing business/professional income. ITR-4S is for individuals/HUFs deriv­ing busi­ness income and such income is com­put­ed in accor­dance with spe­cial pro­vi­sions (44AD and 44AE).

The Finance Min­is­ter also said the gov­ern­ment has con­stant­ly endeav­oured to make the ITR fil­ing pro­ce­dure sim­ple and has­sle free with the intro­duc­tion of elec­tron­i­cal­ly filed ITR forms in 2006-07.

The process of elec­tron­ic fil­ing has been made sim­pler over the years, he added.

As a result, dur­ing 2014–15, 3.41 crore returns were filed elec­tron­i­cal­ly which con­sti­tut­ed 87 per cent of the all the returns filed in the fiscal.

The gov­ern­ment has also pro­vid­ed free ITR prepa­ra­tion soft­ware with the facil­i­ty of pre-filled tax pay­ment and tax deduc­tion columns in the ITR to avoid data entry and mistakes.

Source: Eco­nom­ic Times

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