How to fill new income tax form

With the new financial year comes a new income tax return (ITR) form too. The income tax (I-T) department has said that the new ITR-1 and ITR-4 forms for Assessment Year 2019-20 are available for e-filing on the website. Every year, the tax department makes changes in the ITR form. This year is no different. This time the number of details on your income and investment asked by the tax authorities has increased considerably. Let’s take a look at what has changed for salaried individuals.

The change

If you are a salaried individual, you will have to provide more details in the ITR form for Assessment Year 2019-20. “ITR forms are changed for every financial year. The changes are in line with the Finance Act. This year, a lot of disclosures have been incorporated for individual tax payers,” said Anupam Jain, partner-taxation, Nangia Advisors(Andersen Global). It is not just the salary break up but couple of other changes that may require a lot of collation of data.

ITR-1 or Sahaj is usually the easiest to fill with least number of details. From now, a non-resident Indian (NRI) and resident but not ordinary resident (RNOR) can’t fill the ITR-1 anymore.

Directors of unlisted shares or investors in unlisted equity will also no longer be able to file their returns. “An individual who is a director in an unlisted company, who would have earlier been able to fill the form, is out of the purview of this form. If you hold any unlisted shares in a domestic company, then you are not eligible to fill this form,” she added.

In case of deduction, there is more detailed drop down for section 10, 80D which would have specific disclosures. For instance, if you are taking 80D deduction, you now have to mention PAN and other details. In case of unlisted equity share you have to give exhaustive details such as name of the company, PAN details, number of shares held, number of shares purchased and the price and price sold. Moreover, there are also changes with regard to online filing of returns. If your income is below Rs5 lakh, earlier you didn’t have to file your returns online. However, they have taken away that eligibility – It is not capped at anything. Only if you are a super senior citizen (80 years or above), then you are exempt from filing your returns online.