e-filing of Income Tax Return Mandatory or Not?

Should I file Income Tax Return (ITR)?

If you have any claims of Refund, Income Tax Return(ITR) filing is a must.

But from the Assessment year of 2011-12, Income Tax Return Filing is exempted for those who have total income after deductions  less than 5 lakh, under certain conditions.

If you satisfy those conditions, and if you do not have any claims of refund, you can sit back relaxed! No need to worry about ITR forms.

e-filing of Income Tax Return Mandatory or Not?

If your total income is less than 10 lakh per annum then you can file income tax return either online or manually(the old way of doing – paper). But if your total income is greater than 10 lakh per annum then you should only e-file your income tax returns.

As per Income Tax Department’s notification, e-filing of Income Tax Return has now become mandatory for Individuals and Hindu Undivided Family (HUF), where the Income for the Financial Year (FY) 2011-12 is above Rs 10 Lakh per annum. The new regulation is applicable from 01.04.2012 and for Assessment Year (AY) 2012-13 onwards.

Process of filing income tax returns online (e-filing)

The present process of e-filing is as follows:

• Select appropriate type of Return Form available at e-Filing site
• Download Return Preparation Software for selected Return Form
• Fill your return offline and generate a XML file
• Register and create a user id/password
• Login and click on relevant form and select “Submit Return”
• Browse to select XML file and click on “Upload” button. This can be digitally signed using a Digital Signature Certificate issued to a subscriber by a Licensed Certifying Authority.(Eg: TCS Certifying Authority). Incase, the Return is digitally signed, on generation of ‘Acknowledgement’ the Return Filing process gets immediately completed. No further step is required.
• Incase the return is not digitally signed, on successful uploading of e-Return, the ITR-V Form would be generated, which needs to be printed, ink signed and sent by post to CPC, Bengaluru. E-filing further requires submission of ITR-V within 120 days from the date of filing e-return.This manual process is not necessary if Return is e-filed using Digital Signature Certificate.

Links that are worth checking with respect to income tax filing:

TCS Certifying Authority – For Digital Signature

TCS Certifying Authority, Operational since 2002, is licensed Certifying Authority under the Indian IT Act 2000 to issue Digital Signing Certificates to Organizations and individuals. The Digital Signing Certificates are used to affix legally valid digital signatures by Firms and individual taxpayers to file their Income Tax (IT) Returns electronically without any need for submitting a paper copy. Apart from the convenience of straight through e-filing, Digital Signature technology enables saving of paper contributing to green applications and eco initiatives.

Please visit TCS-CA (http://www.tcs-ca.tcs.co.in) or contact below offices to purchase these Digital Signature Certificates.