The Government of India is taking numerous steps to ensure that the process of online tax filing can become as easy as possible. For the Assessment Year 2015-16, there certain additional benefits which have been given to the tax payers. Key highlights of those benefits are furnished below:
1) No disclosure for Foreign Trips in Detail
If you had foreign trip during the assessment year 2015-16, you are only required to furnish basic details such as your passport number. Contrastingly, when tax payers used to mention foreign trips prior to this period, they are were required to furnish details such as total expense made on the trip, number of trips made during the year along with name of the countries and other relevant information. As of now, just mention your passport number.
2) Furnish minimum details of your bank account/s
As a tax payer, you are just required to quote your bank account number/s along with the IFS code of the bank/s in which you hold your account. No other information is required. Additionally, if you possess a dormant bank account which has been left without a transaction in the past three years of more, you are not required to furnish the same as well. To sum up, you are only required to mention your active bank account number/s and their respective IFS code.
3) Form 2A for tax payers
This is a new form introduced for assesses who have income from various house properties, but make no income from sectors like capital gains, foreign income, income from profession or business. This makes the filing process relatively easier for the tax payers whose income only arises from house properties. Earlier, ITR-2 served as a single form to file taxes under income from Profession or Business, Capital gains and income from house property.
4) Non-India Citizens needs no disclosure
If a non-Indian citizen is in India on employment, business or student visa, the person is not required to reveal the details of asset acquired in foreign. However, if income was generated from the use of that asset, then relevant details has to be furnished to the IT Department of India.
5) Introducing ITR-1
The ITR-1 or also known as Sahaj, is a facilitating form for individuals whose income has been exempted from tax. This includes every form of income apart from income arising out of agriculture and amounting to more than INR 5, 000. In earlier cases, ITR-2 was required to be filed by the assessee.
6) ITR forms are now shorter
According to the new guidelines issued by the IT Department of India, the ITR Form 2 and 2A will be just confined to 3 pages. Within these 3 pages, all necessary information needs to be furnished along with the basic details of the tax payer. Earlier, the same was about 14 pages and exhaustive details were required to be filled up by the assessee.
7) IT Return Filing Date has been extended
A good news for all the tax payers is that the date for filing IT returns has been extended. Since, there has been fresh changes within the Forms and they have been launched in June 3rd week, the IT Department found it feasible to extent the date of IT return filing by 1 month. The last date for filing IT return is August 31 2015 for the current AY.
With these changes, it is evident that the IT Department of India is trying its level best to ensure that the rules and policies become transparent and even a layman can understand the basic requirements of filing taxes online. Introduction of digital signatures has broadened the scope of online tax returns and with Electronic Verification Code (EVC) the need for physical filing after ITR-V is now completely eradicated. For the first time India, tax filing has gone completely digital and in the days to come one can expect that the whole process will simplify further and become an easy solution for people to become responsible citizens. However, if you have any doubt with respect to taxes or efiling, feel free to consult an expert and clarify the same at the earliest.
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