india

Updated: Jul 16, 2019 22:25 IST

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on Tuesday clarified that no changes have been made in any of the income-tax return (ITR) forms since April 1, 2019, the first day of the assessment year 2019-20.

“There were reports in certain social media that the taxpayers are facing difficulties in filing return of income in ITR 2 & ITR 3 due to large scale changes in the ITR form on 11th July, 2019,” it said in a statement.

“However, the software utility update is a dynamic process and is continuously taken up as per the feedback received from users to ease their experience in electronic filing of the return,” it said. The software utility for e-filing of ITR-2 and ITR-3 were released on May 2 and May 10 this year, respectively.

CBDT further clarified that the updating of utility do not hamper filing of return as the taxpayers are allowed to file using the utility which is available at that point of time. For example, more than 85 lakh taxpayers have filed returns in ITR-1 till date by using the said utility which has also undergone update later. “Therefore, the impression that the taxpayers are not able to file return due to changes in ITR form is also not correct as more than 1.38 crore taxpayers have already filed their returns by using the utility released till date,” it said.

Even though the utility is being updated regularly to provide ease to taxpayers, the returns filed by using the previous version of utility will continue to be valid, it said.

It explained that the updation in utility of ITR forms is based on feedback and mainly aimed at easing the compliance burden of the taxpayers by facilitating easier e-filing. “For instance, this year, the facility of pre-filling of return forms has been provided based on the information furnished in the TDS statements. This facility has been updated in the utility subsequently. This would substantially reduce the efforts of taxpayers in filling of return forms,” it said.