How to File Income Tax Return in India

What has to exist before you log in

You need the person's permanent account number, a way to sign in to https://www.incometax.gov.in/, and a file that already names the assessment year, the heads of income, and the regime. The portal will let you open a return without that paper. The return will then be driven by prefill, which is the Department's assembly of information from employers, banks, and other reporters. Prefill is a draft. Your documents decide what you keep.

Collect the employer certificate, interest and investment proofs the regime needs, capital-gains statements if any shares or property moved, and the books if there is a business. Download the tax-credit statement and the annual information statement from the same portal. If tax was deducted, read before you type a credit. The year labels are explained in .

Choose the year and the form the utility offers

Start a return only for the assessment year you intend. The utility then asks questions about residence, heads of income, and regime, and it offers forms that match those answers. If your facts change mid-preparation — a share sale you had forgotten, a freelance invoice — go back and change the answers. The form that was correct ten minutes ago may now be the wrong one. is the fact-pattern guide; the utility's eligibility screen is the decision.

Save the acknowledgement of which form you selected and why, in one sentence on the cover sheet. Reviewers months later cannot reconstruct a guess. The form instructions for that assessment year, published with the utility, override any checklist in a course or an article, including this one.

Prefill, then prove every line

Import prefill after the form is chosen. For each prefilled line, point to a document or mark it as disputed. Salary should agree to the employer certificate. Interest should agree to the bank certificate, not merely to the information statement. Tax deducted should agree to the tax-credit statement. A line with no document is a query, not a silent accept. A document the prefill missed is added, with the schedule it belongs to.

Information statements are leads

The annual information statement and the taxpayer information summary collect what reporters told the Department. They can contain the wrong person, a gross figure where the law taxes a net figure, or a transaction that is not income. Reconcile them. Leave a note where you disagree, and keep the statement export in the file. Ignoring a mismatch is how processing notices start.

Compute, read the sheet, then submit

When the schedules match the documents, open the computation. Check taxable income, the regime, slab or special-rate tax, rebate, surcharge, cess, and credits. The order is the one in . If the payable or refund surprises you, find the line that moved. Do not edit a credit to force a round number.

Submit only after that reading. Submission generates an acknowledgement. The due date for this return is the date the portal and the Finance Act publish for this person and this assessment year — copy it from the portal into the diary. This article does not state a calendar date, because the date moves with notifications and with whether the accounts require audit or the person is a company or a firm.

Verification finishes the filing

A submitted return still has to be verified. The portal lists the methods available for that filing, which have included Aadhaar-based OTP, net banking, and other electronic routes, and at times a signed physical acknowledgement sent to the processing centre. Use a method the portal offers today, and read the time limit it displays. A method that worked three years ago may be closed.

Record the verification date and the acknowledgement number next to the submission acknowledgement. If verification is skipped, processing does not treat the return as filed. Check the portal status the next day rather than assuming the OTP screen was enough. Refunds, if any, follow processing; the status page is the source, not a message from a preparer.

Two employers in one previous year

An employee resigns in August and joins another company in September. Each employer deducts tax using the information that employee gave them. The return must contain both salary certificates, both tax credits, and a single computation of annual income. Prefill sometimes shows one employer late. Wait for both certificates, or add the missing employer from the payslips and reconcile when the information statement updates.

If the first employer's deduction assumed deductions the second employer also assumed, the combined credit can be short of the annual tax. The return shows the payable. Paying it before the date the portal specifies for self-assessment avoids a later interest computation you would rather not discover in an intimation. The defect pattern is written up under .

Checklist from login to verified return

Run the list in order. 1. Confirm PAN, assessment year, and regime on the cover sheet. 2. Select the form the utility allows after the fact questions. 3. Import prefill and tie every line to a document. 4. Reconcile the annual information statement and the tax-credit statement. 5. Read the full computation sheet. 6. Submit and save the acknowledgement. 7. Verify by a method the portal lists, inside the time it shows. 8. Download the verified acknowledgement into the file.

If any step fails validation, read the utility message and fix the schedule it names. A second submission path — revised return or the later updated-return facility — exists only inside conditions and windows the portal states for that year. Do not invent a correction route because a friend used one. Practise the sequence in before you file for someone else.