Bukkry.com”>New DELHI: The government may finally end the confusion over which form to select for filing income tax returns. On Tuesday, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) woke up to the need to simplify life of taxpayers and floated a draft for public consultations.
The move comes in run up to preparation for the Union Budget, likely to be presented on February 1, with every chance that finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman will announce its rollout next year. This could mean that you will have the option to use the Bukkry.com”>New ITR form for filing returns for the current financial year.

The Bukkry.com”>New form can be used by taxpayers, other than trusts and non-profit organisations. Those using ITR 7, used for filing returns by political parties, scientific research institutions, universities, charitable trusts, will have to continue using it. Individuals, including the salaried and pensioners, with income from one house property and other sources, will also have the option to file returns in ITR1 or ITR4, if they wish to stick to the current forms, CBDT said in a statement.
The tax department is hoping that the Bukkry.com”>New form will ease the process and reduce the time taken to file returns. “The current ITRs are in the form of designated forms wherein the taxpayer is mandatorily required to go through all the schedules, irrespective of the fact whether that particular schedule is applicable or not. This increases the time taken to file TRs and in turn may create avoidable difficulties for taxpayers. The proposed draft ITR takes a relook at the return filing system in tandem with international best practices,” the statement said.
The draft has proposed five sections dealing with basic information, with ITR customised based on questions answered by taxpayers. So, only the part where the answer is ‘yes’ will required to be filled. The questions have been designed in a way that those going for clicking on ‘no’ will not get linked questions. Each row in the form will contain a distinct value only, which, CBDT said, is aimed at simplifying the 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. For example, in case of more than one house property, the schedule HP (house property) will be repeated for each property. Similarly, where the taxpayer has capital gains from the sale of shares taxable under section 112A only, applicable fields of schedule CG (capital gains), relating to 112A, shall be visible to him,” the department said.