1. On 01st November 2022, CBDT Propose a Draft Common Income Tax Return (“ITR”) in places of present ITR I to ITR -7 which are generally filed by all the assesses.
 

2. The existing ITR’s are in the form of designated forms, which requires the taxpayers to mandatorily go through all the schedules irrespective Of whether they are applicable or not.
 

3. Following are the key take aways/benefits from the Proposed Common ITR by Central Board of Direct Taxes (“CBDT”):
a) All the existing returns of income shall be merged except ITR -7 in case of Trusts.
b) Current IT R-1 and ITR -4 will continue.
c) Option shall be given to the Taxpayers to choose whether to file the return in the existing (ITR 1 – ITR 4) OR the proposed common ITR, at their convenience.
d) The Draft ITR aims to bring ease of Return Filing process.
e) Reduce the time for filing the ITR by Individuals and non- business type taxpayers.
f) lt intends the smart design of schedules in a user-friendly manner with a better arrangement, logical flow, and increased scope of pre- filling.
g) Proper Reconciliation Of third-party data available with the Income Tax Department visa-vis the data to be reported in the ITR to reduce the compliance burden on the taxpayers.
 

4. The scheme of the Proposed Common ITR is as follows:
a. Basic information, Schedule for computation of total income, Schedule for computation of tax, Details of bank accounts, and a schedule for the tax payments is applicable for all the taxpayers.
b. The ITR is customized for the taxpayers with applicable schedules based on certain questions answered by the taxpayers.
c. The questions have been designed in such a manner and order that if the answer to any question is ‘NO’, the other questions linked to this question Will not be shown to assessee.
d. Instructions have been added to assist in filing of the return containing the directions regarding the applicable schedules.
e. The proposed ITR has been designed in such a manner that each row contains one distinct value only. This will simplify the return filing process.
f. The utility for the ITR will be rolled out in such a manner that only applicable fields of the schedule will be visible and wherever necessary, the set Of fields Will appear more than once. For example, in the case of more than one house property, the schedule HP will be repeated for each property. Similarly, where the taxpayer has capital gains from the sale of shares taxable under section 112A only, applicable fields of the schedule capital gains, relating to section 112A of the Income tax Act, 1961, shall be visible to assessee.