The race to file the ITR
The due date to file the ITR or the Income tax return is near.
For most individual income tax return submitters the due date is 31st July. For those whose accounts need to be audited the due date to file the ITR is 30th September.
For most individuals the due date is 31st July 2024 as they may be salaried employees, self employed freelancers or those having their own business.
The perils of having two tax regimes
Currently there are two different tax regimes to choose from.
The old tax regime is suited for those who wish to save taxes by way of using the various saving instruments designed to save taxes.
They range from Tax saving fixed deposits to public provident fund.
The saving in the PPF or the public provident fund is capped at Rs 150000 for an individual.
This is a good way to save tax and save some money in the long run.
The PPF runs for a period of 15 years.
The PPF scheme is a good way to compound the money you have put in the account. Though the drawback is that it has a tenure of 15 years however the good part is the compounding of money which helps build a good corpus.
The new tax regime is suited for those who do not want to lock in their money in locked savings.
Prior to this year one could choose any tax regime at the time of filling the income tax return for that particular year.
From this year onwards the new tax regime has been made as the default regime.
This means that a user filling his ITR needs to specify which regime to choose from.
Various forms have various methods of selecting the tax regime
For Salaried employees the ITR form of choice is ITR 1
Here selecting the regime is straight forward.
However if a user has indulged in share trading activity then ITR 1 is no longer the form that you need to fill.
Such users who are salaried and have share trading income ITR 2 is to be filled.
In ITR 2 the selection of the tax regime is pretty straight forward.
Tax regime selection is tricky for ITR 3 filers
If you fill ITR 3 then you would remember this as the most detailed income tax return form with numerous sections.
Here the selection of the tax regime is a lot more complicated.
Unlike last year when a person could select the tax regime merely by clicking on a radio button in the form things got a lot more complicated from this year.
Here one needs to fill a form called Form 10-IEA only then the choice pertaining to selection of the old tax regime becomes active.
The process of filing ITR is pretty complicated with lots of twists and turns. One can never be sure as to what unexpected error the income site’s ITR filing process may throw at the user.
Is introducing such complexity needed?
If the government wishes to encourage users towards filing their ITR then certainly they should keep things simple. Such unwanted complicated steps can cause errors to pop up in the already buggy income tax return filing process.
Hope users find some easier way to file the income tax returns.
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