This Change In ITR Filing For AY 2020-21 Definitely Needs Taxpayers Attention

A significant change in ITR filing for Assessment year 2020-21 that is now being acknowledged is the removal of some of the otherwise important fields in ITR-V or ITR Verification form that were previously present in it. In the previous years, this ITR-V carried taxpayer details including income, deductions, tax payable, tax paid etc.

How This Change In ITR-V Impacts Taxpayer?

For various dealings previously, if the taxpayer produced ITR-V it was deemed that the assessee has filed ITR. But this isn't the case, as the process of e-filing of ITR is completed as and when the verification stage is completed. The ITR verification is done both by offline and online modes. In the offline mode, ITR-V is sent over to the Income Tax dept's CPC office in Bengaluru and for the online procedure there are various ways such as via Aadhaar OTP, Net Banking or electronic verification code or EVC.

Now even though an unverified ITR-V is not valid it was taken as a valid proof of filing of return of income.

There have come to light cases where taxpayers in order to fulfill some of the purposes, even filed ITR just to get the ITR-V that until now was accepted as a proof of filing of return of income, but then the problem was later addressed by introducing ITR Acknowledgement. And ITR-V and Acknowledgment together were taken to be valid.

Last year the ITR-V form, to avoid its use as a proof of filing of return of income carried a statement "This is not a proof for having filed the Return", with the format remaining intact.

ITR V for Assessment year 2020-21

Now disqualifying the ITR-V form altogether as a valid proof of return filing all of the integral details have been omitted from it including assessee's income, tax payable, tax refund, deductions, exempt income etc.

And now this ITR-V starting AY 2020-21 bears all such information:

1. Name of the taxpayer

2. PAN

3. Form Number i.e. ITR-1, ITR-2, ITR-3 etc.

4. Section under which return filed: There is a drop down box using which assessee can select the relevant section say under 139(1)-On or before due date

5. e-filing Acknowledgement Number

And this ITR-V has to be verified like the previous Verification forms either via online or offline channel.

GoodReturns.in