New Income Tax Return (ITR) forms for AY 2020-21 notified: Key Changes and Disclosures

CBDT has notified the new ITR forms for FY 2019-20/ AY 2020-21 in line with the amendments made by the Finance Act, 2019. And key changes in the form has been highlighted below:

• Forms Notified: ITR-1 (Sahaj), ITR-2, ITR-3, ITR-4 (Sugam), ITR-5, ITR-6, ITR-7.

• Restriction on Joint Owners of House Property: From this year onwards, Joint owners of house property cannot reflect their income through form ITR-1 and ITR-4.

• Passport No.: If you are a salaried person or a person availing the benefit under presumptive scheme, then you need to disclose your passport number.

• Foreign Travel Expense: The amount spent on foreign travel need to be disclosed if such amount spent is higher than ₹2 Lac in a Financial Year.

• Electricity Expenditure: Amount of your electricity bill has to be disclosed if the same is higher than ₹1 Lack in a year.

• Investment Disclosure: Details of Investments (qualifying for claiming the benefit under chapter VIA) shall be disclosed with bifurcation of details of investment made during the period from 01 April 2020 to 30 June 2020.

• Cash Deposit: Taxpayers availing the benefit of presumptive taxation scheme now need to disclose about the cash deposited in a bank account, if such amount exceeds ₹ 1 Crore during the financial year.

• Government Employees: Now government employees need to mention whether they are employed under State Government or Central Government. And a new type “NA” has been added to the list.

• Optional PAN No: In ITR-4, PAN number is made optional if the aadhar number is provided.

• Presumptive taxation for Goods Carriers: To curb the leakage of taxation a new validation of “Number of vehicles should not exceed 10 vehicles at any time during the year” is added.