The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has notified the Income Tax Return (ITR) forms for the assessment year 2020-21. The CBDT would normally issue new ITR forms only when the Financial Year gets over. However, this year, it has issued it before time. This comes as in the past few years, due to amendments in the forms, the ITR forms notifation were delayed, sometimes even after the FY started.
There are around seven ITR forms in the current AY20 and CBDT has notified ITR 1 and ITR 4 for AY21. The other forms are also expected to be notified soon.
Experts are expecting that the government will notify all the other forms by the end of the FY in order to make it available for the tax payers to file their returns as the AY starts.
Here's what has changed
Now, apart from information like PAN and Aadhaar number that is supposed to be put on the ITR forms, passport number should also be mentioned, in ITR-1 and ITR-4, even if you were abroad during the assesment year.
Other major changes in the ITR are that one, an individual tax payer cannot file his returns in ITR-1 or ITR-4 if he is a joint-owner of a house property and two, ITR-2 will not be valid for those individuals who have deposited more that Rs 1 crore in a bank account, experts said.
Do you think you can file the ITR early?
One also need to be aware of the fact that ITR-1 can only be used by an indiviual whose income includes salary income and the tota income is not more than Rs 50 lakh during the FY. This income can also include income from interest, family pension and agricultural income.
ITR-4 can be used to file returns by resident individuals, HUFs and firms whose total income is upto Rs 50 lakh.
With respect to Finance Act, 2019, if you have deposited more than Rs 1 crore in one or more current accounts, then this should be mentioned in the ITR forms. This is a new provision.
Even though the ITR forms have been notified early, one cannot file their returns early. The e-filing utilities are yet to be updated.
ITR can be filed from April 1 onwards and should be filed before July 31.
