Income Tax Returns (ITR): A big announcement made by CBDT
Income Tax Returns(ITR): A big announcement made by CBDT – Central Board of Direct Taxes clarified that no changes have been made in the Income Tax Return (ITR) forms including ITR-2 and ITR-3.
Last week, a chartered accountant’s tweet claiming that Income Tax Return (ITR) forms had been changed last-minute created quite a flutter. Thankfully, CBDT stepped in just in time to clear up the confusion – clarifying that it was just the ITR forms meant for partial online filing that had been updated a little later, and all other ITR forms were updated and made available online by the income tax department on 1 April 2019 itself.
On 15 July, chartered accountant Nikhil Vadia tweeted, “There are 47 changes made in income tax return (ITR) 2 form and 53 changes in ITR 3 on July 11, 2019. Software providers will take at least one week to make changes available. We are heading for a disaster in income tax return filing this time.”
The clarification comes up in the wake of certain reports in social media that taxpayers are facing problems in filing their income tax returns in ITR-2 and ITR-3 due to large scale changes in the ITR form on July 11, 2019.
The Clarification:
CBDT said, “The software utility for e-filing of all the ITR forms has been released longback. The utility for e-filing ITR-2 and ITR-3 were released on 2′ May and on May 10, 2019 respectively. However, the software utility update is a dynamic process and is continuously taken up as per the feedback received from the users filers to ease their experience in electronic filing of the return.”
Partial online ITR filing is where you need to download the applicable income tax utility either in excel or java format, fill the form offline, save it, generate an XML file and then upload it. Complete online filing is where you enter the relevant data directly in an online form and submit it. “No changes have been made in any of the Income-tax Return (ITR) forms including ITR-2 and ITR-3 since the notification made on 1st April 2019, i.e. on the 1st day of the Assessment Year 2019-20,” CBDT stated.
The changes:
Though it is true that the details released for ITRs form showed that there were 47 changes in ITR-2 and 53 in ITR-3, according to experts, these were available for complete online filing forms from 1 April 2019, and from 10 May 2019 for forms meant for partial filing.
Except a few changes, most of the changes are small and do not significantly impact tax filing,” said a tax expert, on the condition of anonymity. However, some other experts feel tax filingmay have become a little tougher to navigate. “There have been quite a few changes in the ITR form, wherein detailed explanations are required to be filled by individuals which makes ITR filing cumbersome and time taking. Individuals now need to be aware of the type of deductions and exemptions to be claimed and those that are allowed,” said Heena Arora, marketing and finance head, All India ITR, an e-filing portal.