It is a prescribed form through which the particulars of income earned by a person in a financial year and taxes paid on such income is communicated to the Income tax department after the end of the financial year. Different forms are prescribed for filing of returns for different Status and nature of income.

Filing of return is your constitutional duty and earns for you the dignity of consciously contributing to the development of the nation. This apart, your IT returns validate your credit worthiness before financial institutions and make it possible for you to access many financial benefits such as bank credits etc.

No, on the contrary by not filing your return in spite of having taxable income, you will be laying yourself open to the penal and prosecution provisions under the Income-tax Act.

For an individual or HUF, 31st July of assessment year is the last day for filing return of income/loss.

Amounts paid as advance tax and withheld in the form of TDS or collected in the form of TCS will take the character of your tax due only on completion of self-assessment of your income. This self-assessment is intimated to the department by way of filing of return. Only then does the government acquire rights over the prepaid taxes as its own revenue. Filing of return is critical for this process and, hence, has been made mandatory. Failure will attract levy of penalty.

Individuals are mandatorily required to file return of income if their income from all sources – salary, interest income, etc. – exceeds basic exemption limit of Rs. 2.5 lakhs. For senior citizens and super senior citizens, this limit is Rs. 5 lakhs.

It is never too late to start honoring your constitutional obligations for payment of tax. The department may ask you to file return of income for earlier years if it finds that you had taxable income in those years.

If you have sustained a loss in the financial year, which you propose to carry forward to the subsequent year for adjustment against its positive income, you must make a claim of loss by filing your return before the due date.

Yes, as per notification from CBDT (The Central Board of Direct Taxes) dated 01.05.2013, it is mandatory to file return of income electronically (E-filing).

The Public Relation Officer [PRO] can be contacted for this purpose. The form can also be downloaded from the site http://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/ (Click on ‘Downloads’ and select ‘Income Tax Returns’).

Any individual having an annual income of up to Rs. 50 lakhs from salaries, a house, interest income, family pension income, etc., has to file ITR 1-Sahaj form. However, if an individual earns upto Rs. 50 lakhs annually, but also have a house, deposited more than Rs 1 crore in a bank account or incurred Rs. 2,00,000 on foreign travel or Rs. 1,00,000 on electricity bill, they have to file ITR 4-Sugam form.

A return is to be filed before your Assessing officer. It may even be sent by post or filed electronically. Nowadays returns are also being received at designated post offices.

He / She is an officer of the Income tax department who has been given jurisdiction over a particular geographical territory or class of persons. You can find out from the PRO or from the Departmental website http://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/ as to your jurisdiction.

You can authorize any person by way of a Power of Attorney to file your return. A copy of the Power of Attorney should be enclosed with the return.

Yes. This may take the form of interest if the return is not filed before the end of the assessment year. Fees for late filing of return [Section 234F]

[Applicable for ITR 1 to 7]

Up to Assessment Year 2017-18, if assessee fails to file the return of income before the end of the assessment year, penalty under Section 271F may be imposed by the Assessing Officer. This penalty provision was omitted by the Finance Act, 2017.

In lieu of such penalty, the Finance Act, 2017 levies a new fees if assessee does not furnish the return of income on the due dates prescribed under Section 139(1).

The amount of such late filing fees shall be:

A. Rs. 5,000 if return is furnished after the due date but before December 31 of the assessment year [Rs. 1,000 if total income is up to Rs. 5 lakhs].

B. Rs. 10,000, in any other case.

After introducing this new provision, the assessees shall now be required to pay the late filing fees under section 234F along with interest under section 234A, 234B and 234C before filing of return of income. The Income-tax Dept. shall not be required to initiate the penalty proceedings separately to levy such fees on late filers.

Relevant changes have been incorporated in the new ITR forms wherein a new row is added to enable the assessee to fill the details of late filing fees.


Yes. It may be furnished at any time before the expiry of one year from the end of the financial year in which the income was earned. For example, in case of income earned during FY 2018-19, the belated return can be filed before 31st March 2020.

The excess tax can be claimed as refund by filing your income tax return. It will be refunded by issue of cheque or by crediting to your bank account. The department has been making efforts to settle refund claims within four months from the month of Filing return.

Yes.

Yes, but only before completion of assessment year provided the department has not completed assessment. However, it is expected that the mistake in the original return is of a genuine and bona fide nature. For example, for Assessment year 2020-21 you can revise your return upto 31-March-2021.

Theoretically a return can be revised any number of times before the end of the assessment year or before assessment by the department is completed; whichever event takes place earlier. For example, for Assessment year 2020-21 you can revise your return upto 31-March-2021.

Yes. Since legal proceedings under the income tax act can be initiated up to six years prior to the current financial year, you must maintain such documents at least for this period.

Non-payment of tax attracts interests, penalty and prosecution. The prosecution can lead to rigorous imprisonment from 6 months to 7 years and fine.

Taxpayers are required to make advance tax payments if their total tax liability (including income from other sources and so on) in a financial year is more than Rs 10,000. However, most salaried people believe that they don’t have to pay it since tax is already deducted at source from their salaries. As a salaried taxpayer, you can be liable to pay advance tax if you have not reported other sources of income such as interest income to your employer. Penal interest on shortfall in advance tax is payable at 1 percent under section 234B and also under Section 234C, separately, depending on the amount of shortfall in advance tax and dates by which it was not paid as required.

The process to pay ‘tax due’ online to NSDL is:

1. Visit the link: https://onlineservices.tin.egov-nsdl.com/etaxnew/tdsnontds.jsp
2. Select Challan No 280
3. Select code 0021 for tax applicable, relevant assessment year (mention current year filing), and Type of payment as ‘300’ for self assessment tax or ‘100’ for advance tax
4. Enter the whole amount of the tax due under the head Basic Tax, leaving all other entries blank
5. Save the soft copy of the challan generated by your bank on your PC

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