Parliamentary panel asks Finance Ministry to bring common ITR form soon, requests to further simplify ITR filing

To make it easier for individuals and non-business taxpayers to file IT returns, a parliamentary panel today asked the finance ministry to come out with a common income tax return (ITR) form soon.
The ministry had in November last year proposed a user-friendly common income tax return form for all taxpayers except trusts and non-profit organizations, seeking comments from stakeholders.
The Standing Committee on Finance, headed by BJP MP Jayant Sinha, had earlier flagged difficulties faced by people in filing income tax returns and urged the tax department to make the process simpler and more taxpayer-friendly.
MP Jayant Sinha had said that any person having income from various sources like salary, rent, and business income cannot file ITR on his own and he has to take the advice of a Chartered Accountant or a person having sufficient knowledge and expertise in filing ITR.
In response to the recommendations of the committee, the ministry has said that to make tax compliance more convenient, individual taxpayers are being provided with pre-filled details of certain income like salary.
The tax department said the scope of information for pre-filing is being further expanded by including information such as house property income, bank interest, and dividends.
The recommendations of the committee propose to introduce a common ITR form in line with international best practices, by amalgamating all the existing forms except ITR-7.
The Committee expressed hope that they are hopeful that the proposed ITR form will bring a lot of ease in filing returns for individual and non-business-type taxpayers.