With new income tax return forms now notified, here is a step-by-step guide for filing income tax returns. Income tax return filing may seem like a big deal for the beginners. However, following sequential steps would make the task easy. July 31^st is the last date for filing income-tax return for salaried assessee.

1. Preparing statement of income:
   First & foremost, assessee should prepare the statement of income by incorporating all the income including FD/SB Interest, exempt income details, capital gain, salary/rental income, loss brought forward & carried forward, investment eligible for deduction etc. Once income statement is ready, taxpayer should compute the tax & if there is any balance tax liability after considering TDS/advance tax paid, then pay it along with interest, if any. One should verify the tax details by downloading Form No. 26AS from incometaxindia.gov.in which shows all the details like TDS & other taxes paid in the relevant year.
2. Select correct ITR forms for filing:
   Before filing, taxpayer should ascertain the correct ITR forms in which return has to be filed. Make sure that the correct form is chosen for filing. If the wrong form is selected, it will be considered as a failure to file returns by the IT department. For salaried taxpayer & other taxpayers who don’t have any business income, ITR-1 or 2 is applicable.

Procedure for filing the returns:
I] Whether to file online or physically?
Now, most of the returns are required to be filed online in electronic mode only and the paper filing is restricted in following two cases only.

1. Very Senior Citizens of the age of 80 years or more at any time during the previous year.
2. Individual/HUF filing ITR 1/ITR 4 not having a refund claim in the return & total income is not more than Rs. 5,00,000

II] Procedure for paper filing:
One can take the printout of the ITR form from the above mentioned website. After filling all the relevant details like personal information, income details, tax deposit details in the hard copy, one can sign & submit the same with the jurisdictional assessing officer. The receiving office at the income tax office will stamp your acknowledgement and give a copy back to you. Assessee is not require to submit any other supporting documents with the tax return. Taxpayer may check the tax jurisdiction by logging at the above quoted income-tax department website.

III] Procedure for filing return online:
a] The online filing process starts by clicking the ‘register’ link at income-tax e-filing website incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in. For registration, one has to provide personal details like PAN, name as per the PAN card, father’s name, date of birth, email address and contact number. The website provides required flow to complete the registration process.

b] Download the applicable return preparation form from the website and fill in the personal information and income-related details in the downloaded form. To ensure that all columns in the return form are file in properly, there is a process to validate the information by clicking on the ‘validate’ button on the last sheet.

c] On successful validation, access the ‘generate XML’ link in the tax return software and save the generated XML file. It is the XML file which is upload on the e-filing website. An acknowledgement form in ITR-V is generate on successful e-filing.

d] If the return is filed without using digital signature & without mentioning Aadhar card, taxpayer would be required to take the print out of ITR-V, sign it in blue ink and dispatch it by ordinary/speed post to the Central Processing Centre (CPC), Bangalore within 120 days of uploading the return. On receipt of the signed ITR-V, tax department will send an email acknowledging the receipt of the ITR-V at the email id mentioned in the return form. There is no need to send ITR-V in the local office of the income-tax department. It may be noted that ITR-V is a password protected document & the password is PAN and date of birth in small case in continuation. [Using Aadhar number is optional as of now. The government has come up with an idea of dispensing with the formality of forwarding the duly signed ITR-V form to CPC, Bengaluru, if the taxpayer provides with the Aadhaar number at the time of filing].