Budget 2021: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her budget announcement on Monday said the government has made income tax return (ITR) filing simpler as details regarding dividend, capital gains and interest income will come pre-filled now. The FM, however, did not announce change in income tax slabs for the salaried class.
Notably, the details of salary income, tax payments, TDS (tax deducted at source), etc, already come pre-filled in income tax returns.
The Finance Minister said to further ease filing of returns, details of "capital gains from listed securities, dividend income, and interest from banks, post office, etc, will also be pre-filled". The new ITR forms will be made available soon.
The Centre also gave relief to senior citizens in terms of direct taxes by easing compliance burden. She said senior citizens above 75 years of age with only one pension and interest income would be exempted from filing income tax returns (ITR).
"In order to ease compliance burden on senior citizen pensioners who are of 75 years of age or above, it is proposed to exempt them from the requirement of filing income tax if the full amount of tax payable has been deducted by the paying bank," she said in Parliament.
In order to reduce tax compliance burden, the time-limit for re-opening of assessment has also been reduced to three years from the current six years from the end of the relevant assessment year. "Re-opening up to 10 years is proposed to be allowed only if there is evidence of undisclosed income of Rs 50 lakh or more for a year," the FM said.
She added re-opening will be made only in cases flagged by the system on the basis of data analytics, objection of C&AG (Comptroller and Auditor General of India) and in search/survey cases.