Now foreign trips to figure in tax returns

Taxpayers will have to disclose all bank accounts held by them in the country and provide details of foreign travel to the Income Tax department while filing their returns for the assessment year 2015-16.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), the apex policy making body of the Income Tax department, has notified new Income Tax Return (ITR) forms for the current assessment year, which has made additions to the existing format in order to gather more detailed information about earnings and expenditure to rein in the menace of black money.

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The new ITR forms, including the ITR-1 and ITR-2, require an assessee to furnish the number of bank accounts held by the individual at any time (including opened/closed) during the previous year with the last balance in his or her account on March 31 of the just concluded fiscal.

The assessee will also have to furnish the name of the bank, account number/numbers, its address, IFSC code and any possible joint account holder.

When it comes to disclosure of foreign travel, the assessee's will have to disclose the passport number, the place at which the passport was issued, countries visited, number of times the foreign trips were made and in case of a resident taxpayer, the expenses incurred from own sources in relation to such travel.

The I-T department had last year made it mandatory for taxpayers to mention details of all assets they hold in foreign soil under a new schedule-details of foreign assets and income from any source outside India. The new measures are part of the government's effort to tackle black money in a non-obstrusive manner. The details will add to the taxman's knowledge about a particular assessee, a senior I-T officer said. The new ITR forms also include an additional column in which the Aadhaar number of the assessee has to be mentioned.