How to file your ITR

We are fast approaching the deadline of filing the income-tax return (ITR) for the financial year 2022-23. Individuals are required to file their return latest by July 31, 2023. Here's how you can do this important task in a matter of minutes. To illustrate, let's take the case of a salaried taxpayer who also has some taxable capital gains, resulting from the sale of his investments in mutual funds. Documents you need while filing the ITR Form 26AS: This document details the tax that has already been deducted and deposited with the tax authorities on your behalf. Remember the big, fat figure under the head 'Tax Deducted at Source' (TDS) that sits on your salary slip and eats away into your salary before it hits your bank account? Well, it finds its way into the government coffers and gets accounted for on your Form 26AS. You can download it from the 'Income Tax Returns' section under the 'e-File' tab on the menu bar after logging into the new Income Tax portal. Likewise, you can also download the Annual Information Statement (AIS) available under the 'Services' tab. It is precisely a statement of all the income and transactions reported to the income tax department against your PAN. While it is not necessary that it will have information of all the transactions, the statement can be handy to provide details for some common transactions that you may otherwise miss. For example, interest paid by bank. Form 16: You must be familiar with this document. You get this from your employer every year and it details the tax computation on your salary and the tax deducted thereof. You may also get a separate Form 16 from your b

This article was originally published on November 30, 2021, and last updated on July 06, 2023.