The Income Tax department will soon come out with new forms for filing tax returns in lieu of the existing one-page Saral form, even as officials said the new ones would be more tax assessee-friendly.
The Saral form, (meaning simple) may have just a single page but it does not make the job of filing in returns any simpler, tax authorities said.
The idea behind the new form is to ensure that it could be filled in easily by honest tax assessees without assistance of chartered accountants or experts.
They said presently, along with the one-page form, tax assessees needed to attach two or three additional sheets, explaining their total income and wondered how it could be called saral.
Saral does not mean number of pages that tax assessees have to fill up but it has to be simple, easy to understand with proper explanations given.
If the font size in the form is reduced and little space is provided for writing the name of the bank and account number, it cannot be described as saral. It only complicates the procedure of filling up the form and makes it illegible.
The authorities cited example of the US Income Tax form, which is so easy to fill and self-explanatory that it could be filled up without assitance from anybody. Mere length and number of pages should not make it saral.
Notification of the new Income Tax form is likely in the next four or five days and until that happens, the existing income tax forms are valid for filing Income Tax returns.
With certain changes in the Finance Bill like Section 88 being replaced by Section 80 (c) for saving schemes, the Form 16 which is provided by the employer for tax deductions at source also undergoes some modifications.
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