Taxman working on pre-filled return forms

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 30

In a bid to make life easy for taxpayers, particularly the salaried employees, the Centre is working on finalising a new pre-filled Income Tax Return (ITR) form, which is likely to be rolled out from next fiscal year (2019-20).

A senior Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) official told The Tribune that the move is aimed at making the compliance burden of taxpayers easy and smooth and also to reduce human interaction in the process of filing I-T returns.

According to the official, the CBDT is currently in the process of finalising the norms for pre-filled forms, which will generally be based on tax deducted at source (TDS) details already submitted to the department by the employer or any other entity. “Soon taxpayers, whose tax liability has already been deducted at sources, will get a pre-filled I-T return form,” he said, adding that the move appears to be meaningful because the money as part of TDS is already with the government and, therefore, such a facility will make life easier for taxpayers.

The official said, the new system, once put in place, will make the processing of I-T return forms fast, as it could take less than even a week. “Once the taxpayer gets the pre-filled form in which all his deductions will be shown, he/she will only be required to justify that the form is correct and declare that he/she does not have any other source of income other than on which TDS was deducted,” said the official, adding that the same will be accepted for further processing.

It is learnt that only 0.5 percent of cases have so far been taken up for scrutiny and even these cases are being selected by a computer system, which allows zero discretion on the part of tax officials in selecting I-T-related cases for scrutiny. The focus of the entire exercise is to minimise the discretion of tax officials, it is learnt.