Things take time to change, but when they do, it makes significant difference. My experience with tax returns was similar. Filing income tax returns has never been easy for me.

Thanks to the new ‘annexure-less’ Income Tax Return (ITR) forms introduced by the Income Tax authorities, things have changed for the better. Not only do the forms have a logical flow, they also provide detailed instructions for each item in the form making it easy to fill the forms. Further, because these forms are annexure-less, they remove the fear of losing one’s original documents, particularly the TDS certificates. Although the forms are lengthy and call for greater disclosures, I believe that they are a must for an assessing officer to do a preliminary review of an assessee’s return. Further, it disciplines the record keeping of assessees, particularly individuals.

The new forms also seem to be an attempt by the tax authorities to bring about standardization in the processes of disclosing the details. In the past, every assessee followed a different format of providing his or her income disclosures. The irony of the situation was that ‘Saral’ forms actually failed to provide ‘Saralta’ (ease) for authorities in reviewing them, leading to inefficiencies in the process and loss to the country.

Overall, the new forms are a great attempt although only time will tell how much ‘Saralta’ they will eventually achieve. However, further improvisation and clarity may be required, particularly on disclosures relating to aspects of Annual Information Return (AIR) filed by banks. One wonders whether these details would really provide an adequate or correct insight to the authorities. In my opinion, it would be more logical and useful for the authorities to know the year-end balances of investments of an assessee, which surprisingly, has never been asked. Could it mean that authorities are not interested in inviting any backlash from some of the influential segments of society?

Let’s hope that the new forms improve the efficiency of our tax collections. But for the time being, I feel that the authorities should be appreciated for their focused and improved co-operation, particularly for the fact that the whole department will sacrifice their personal time this weekend to help citizens in completing their filing process.