CBDT Proposes One Common ITR Form For Taxpayers

In an effort to ease the Income Tax Return (ITR) filing process, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) released a draft proposal on Tuesday stating that a common ITR will be issued by merging all the existing ITRs except ITR-7. 

Though, the ITR 1 and ITR 4 will continue as before. 

The tax filers will be provided with the choice to choose between the common (merged) ITR form or the previous ITR 1 and ITR 4.

At present, taxpayers are required to fill out ITR forms from ITR 1 to ITR 7, depending on the type and nature of their income. This can be time-consuming as they need to go through all the schedules, even if some of them aren't applicable to their specific situation.

The merged proposed ITR has been drafted in tandem with international best practices. The schemes for the new ITR are 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 customised 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 in 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.

Following this process, the taxpayer will have to answer the questions which apply to them and fill the schedules linked to those questions. Once receiving the inputs from the stakeholders, the IT department will release the online utility. 

The proposal can be found at www.incometaxindia.gov.in. A sample ITR guiding step-by-step instructions and two customised sample ITRs for the firm and company have also been available on the site. 

The inputs on the proposed draft can be shared at dirtlp[at]nic[dot] with a copy to dirtpl1[at]nic[dot]in latest by 15 December 2022.