Section 139 of the Income Tax Act governs the filing of a return of income. A common understanding is that the obligation to file an income tax return (ITR) arises if an individual earns income on which tax has been deducted.

This is not entirely true. Section 139 lists certain situations wherein return filing by an individual is mandatory even if no tax has been deducted from his income or even if he does not earn any income.

Updated ITR Filing 2022: The Income Tax Department recently announced a new form for filing of Updated Income Tax Returns. A new concept of updated return was introduced in Budget 2022. It allows taxpayers to amend their ITRs within two years from the end of the relevant assessment year. The new provision is expected to help taxpayers who often commit errors or make some omissions while filing ITR.
1. In the form for Updated ITR, taxpayers are required to declare the purpose for filing as well as the amount of income to be taxed in the updated return.

2.Taxpayers are not required to provide a break up of the income reported in the ITR (Updated).

3. Taxpayers can now use the new form ITR-U to file the updated income tax return for financial years 2019-20 and 2020-21.


4. Certain taxpayers are required to file the Updated ITR electronically using a digital signature or an electronic verification code. The taxpayer has to file the ITR Forms of the relevant assessment year and submit it along with the new ITR-U.

5. The ITR-U has to be filed within two years of the end of the relevant assessment year. For doing this, taxpayers are also required to provide reasons for updating the ITR. According to Tax2Win, the reasons for filing ITR-U may be many, including previous return not filed, income not reported correctly , wrong heads of income choses, reduction of a carried forward loss etc.

The revenue department has launched investigations under the anti-tax avoidance law, General Anti-avoidance Rule (GAAR), into companies and entities that may have used creative methods to avoid paying taxes.

A Hyderabad-based company, Ekge Retail, has received a notice in which the department has applied Section 96(1)(d) of the Income-tax Act, which deals with impermissible agreements undertaken to avoid taxation.

The company has now approached the high court for state of Telangana at Hyderabad challenging the applicability of the section for some transactions undertaken by it in 2018 and 2019. The notice was issued to the company in February 2022.

Foreign investors coming from Mauritius are often denied capital gains tax relief on the grounds that persons controlling the tax haven companies are based in other countries. This may change now.

One such attempt by the Income tax (I-T) department to lift the 'corporate veil' was struck down this week by a court which ruled that the tricky subject of 'beneficial ownership' (BO) of the Mauritian entity cannot be linked to capital gains.

The ruling by Income tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), a quasi-judicial authority, relating to Blackstone FP Capital Partners Mauritius V Ltd, pertains to financial year 2015-16 when it booked capital gains of over ?900 crore after selling stocks of CMS Info Systems.

The finance ministry will clarify doubts on the applicability of new TDS provision regarding benefits or perquisites received in a business or profession, a senior tax official said on Wednesday.

Joint Secretary in the finance ministry Kamlesh C Varshney said that such benefits and perquisites are income and were always taxable whether received in cash or kind.

The Budget 2022-23 brought in the provision of tax deducted at source (TDS) on such income to check tax revenue leakage.

If you have not filed the income tax return for fiscal 2020-21, then you will be on the list of non-tax filers and have to face higher tax deduction at source from this financial fear. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has issued a circular to determine the non-filers, or “specified person” who are subject to higher tax withholding or collection for FY 2022-23, while relaxing some of the guidelines.

According to the circular, if the ITR was not filed for the relevant previous fiscal year and the aggregate TDS and tax collected at source exceeded Rs 50,000 that year, it would attract a high TDS. Banks will be required to check if an individual has met both conditions to attract a higher TDS.

Switzerland’s building materials conglomerate Holcim Group will not incur capital gains tax or any other tax following the stake sale of its Indian assets – Ambuja Cements and ACC – for about $10.5 billion to Adani Group. This gains importance as Hong Kong-based Hutchison was marred in a controversy following a $11-billion deal with UK’s Vodafone Group in 2007.

“Our analysis comes to the conclusion that there is no capital gains or any other tax for this transaction. Never know if any complication would arise, but we assume we will get the 6.4 billion Swiss francs as net proceeds,” Holcim Chief Executive Officer Jan Jenisch said in an analysts’ call on Monday.

The income tax department has issued guidelines for selection of I-T returns for complete scrutiny in the current fiscal and said such scrutiny would be applicable in cases where information about tax evasion is available from any other authority. The guidelines for selection for complete scrutiny have also added an additional limb of obtaining prior administrative approval of the Principal Commissioner/ Principal Director/ Commissioner / Director in certain cases, for selection of such cases for complete scrutiny.

For instance, cases pertaining to survey, search and seizure and cases where charitable trusts have claimed exemption without a valid approval have been made subject to prior approval before transmission to the National Faceless Assessment Centre (NaFAC) for serving necessary scrutiny notices.

Under complete scrutiny, a detailed scrutiny of the return of income is carried out by tax officers to confirm the genuineness of various claims, deductions, etc made by the taxpayer.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) issued on Wednesday extensive guidelines for implementing a Supreme Court (SC) order in reassessment cases.

The court had early this month ruled that the thousands of show cause notices the Income Tax department had issued under a previous regime should be treated as ones issued under a new one for reopening assessment cases.


The CBDT said that for three years, viz. assessment years (AY) 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16, reassessment notices will not be issued for small taxpayers whose asset is less than Rs 50 lakh.

The CBDT also clarified about subsequent years--AY 2016-17 and AY 2017-18--where timeline to issue notices under Section 148, as extended by various Taxation & Other Laws Amendment Acts ('TOLA') till June 30, falls within period of three years. Tax officers, in such cases, will issue show cause notices and provide material/ information to taxpayers for initiating reassessment proceedings, within 30 days--June 2.

In a notification issued on May 10, 2022, the government has come out with new rules especially pertaining to those making financial transactions without a Permanent Account Number (PAN) or Aadhaar. The Central Board of Direct Taxes has made new rules, called the Income–tax (Fifteenth Amendment) Rules, 2022.

As per the new rules, furnishing PAN or Aadhaar will be compulsory in the following transactions:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday held that the reassessment notices issued under the unamended Section 148 of the Income Tax Act on or after April 1, 2021, will not be deemed to be invalid just because they were issued under the old law.

While modifying the relevant orders of various high courts that quashed the reassessment notices issued under the Section after the cut-off date, the SC said that these notices will be deemed as show-cause notices issued to the respective assessees under the new Section 148A of the Act.

Indians earning “interest” on their cryptocurrencies from platforms outside India have come under taxman’s scrutiny, two people familiar with the development said.

The tax department is looking to slap additional tax deducted at source (TDS) and equalisation levy on such transactions and interest income generated by Indians, they said.

The move comes at a time when decentralised finance (DeFi), which is the financial ecosystem built on blockchain applications and can be used for remitting money or buying insurance or even borrowing money against cryptocurrencies, is fast gaining traction, and many Indians have now taken to earning interest income by depositing cryptocurrencies for a fixed period of time with the platform.

The Income Tax department has notified a new form for filing updated I-T returns in which taxpayers will have to give the exact reason for filing it along with the amount of income to be offered to tax. The new form (ITR-U) will be available to taxpayers for filing updated income tax returns for 2019-20 and 2020-21 fiscals.

Taxpayers filing ITR-U, which can be filed within 2 years of the end of the relevant assessment year, will have to give reasons for updating the income -- return previously not filed or income not reported correctly or wrong heads of income chosen or reduction of carried forward loss.

The reasons given in the form also include reduction of unabsorbed depreciation or reduction of tax credit u/s 115JB/115JC or wrong rate of tax or any other reasons given by the taxpayers.

Income-tax laws lay out provisions for taxation of notional income on exercise of employee stock options (ESOPs) by characterising the differential between Fair Market Value (FMV) of shares allotted on exercise and strike price as perquisite. Taxation of such perquisites follows a similar course as for taxation of other salary components. Clarity on taxation front begins to turn obscure when ESOPs are exercised and shares allotted, post cessation of employer-employee relationship. Questions surround the discharge of taxes post termination of the employer-employee relationship.

The government has now made it mandatory for an individual to file income tax returns if his/her total TDS/TCS during the financial year is Rs 25,000 or more even if the individual's income is below the basic exemption limit. In case of senior citizens this rule will apply if the individual's aggregate TDS/TCS is Rs 50,000 or more in the year, according to Aakanksha Goel, Direct Tax Partner, T R Chadha & Co LLP. Further, an individual whose deposits in a saving bank account are Rs 50 lakh or more in the fiscal will also have to compulsorily file ITR irrespective of his/her income level.

The seventh proviso to Section 139 was inserted by the Finance Act, 2019, which provided for certain criteria which mandated the filing of income-tax returns even when the individual's income is less than the basic exemption limit. Such criteria include deposition of Rs one crore or more in a current account, expenditure exceeding Rs 2 lakh for foreign travel, or an amount exceeding Rs 1 lakh for electricity consumption during the year.

Now, vide Notification No. 37/2022, CBDT has notified a new Rule 12AB which prescribes additional conditions which mandate the filing of Income-tax returns despite the fact that income is below the basic exemption limit, says Ms Goel. These additional criteria are...

Income tax rules keep changing and taxpayers need to be aware of them to be on the right side of law. For income tax purposes, a financial year (FY) begins in April and ends on March 31 of the following year. Currently, we are in the financial year 2022-23 and there have been certain amendments in tax rules that will be applicable from this FY onwards. Let’s see some of them:


NPS contribution: For the central government employees, the government was already contributing 14% of employee’s wages towards employee’s NPS account. Starting this FY, state government employees will receive a 14% contribution into their NPS account from their respective state governments. Deduction for employer contribution to NPS has been increased from 10% to 14% for state government employees on par with central government employees. However, it has not been extended to non-govt employees.

The income tax department has notified the income tax return (ITR) forms for FY 2021-22 or AY 2022-23. An assessment year (AY) is the year followed by the financial year and AY is the year in which income earned by an individual during the FY is reported to the government and taxes are paid accordingly.

For FY2021-22, no major changes have been made in the ITR forms. However, few changes have been made which require the taxpayer to provide additional information while filing ITR.

Here is a look at the additional information you are required to provide while filing your income tax return this year.

The functionality for updating UDIN against the Audit reports submitted by CA users has been enabled at e-filing
portal www.incometax.gov.in.
Please Note:
1. Update UDIN functionality is applicable only for Forms submitted on or after April 2021.
2. UDIN for only those Forms can be updated which are accepted by the Assessee.
3. Following information is correctly filled against the Form as per UDIN generated from ICAI portal

The finance ministry (FinMin) has asked Infosys to work on ways to extract and access taxpayers’ real-time data faster and accurately as it is crucial for taking decisions on policy changes.

While reviewing progress of the income tax portal 2.0, which had faced glitches, the officials also told the Infosys team to increase the scope of pre-filled data in the ITR forms.

Senior officials in the ministry held a review meeting last month with the Infosys team and officials of the Central Processing Centre (CPC).

The process of Income Tax Return (ITR) filing for the Assessment Year (AY) 2022-23 has been initiated with timely notification of ITR Forms (from ITR-1 to ITR-6). However, only two ITR Forms – viz. ITR-1 (Sahaj) and ITR-4 (Sugam) – are now available on the Income Tax Portal for filing of the return of income.

Once the details of tax deducted at source (TDS) are fully submitted and the forms like Form 16, Form 26AS, etc are made available, other ITR Forms would also be made available for filing.