During Budget 2020, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced that a new Form 26AS will replace the older one. Now, a new Form 26AS has been released by the Income Tax Department, and it will contain more information than ever. The information embedded in the Form 26AS is very vital, but unfortunately, only a few know about it.

Here is all you need to know about the new form:

What's New?

In the older version of Form 26AS, only a few personal details were provided. like PAN number, full name, and address. While now, additional information like Phone Number and email address. The Income Tax Department now sends all the new information and notifications through emails and texts on the phone number. Till now, you may have ignored updating your phone number when changing the sim card but not anymore.

Apart from email address and phone number, the new Form 26AS now also includes your birthdate for unknown reasons.

Taxes And Proceedings

The new Form 26AS will have all the details of taxes that deducted by your company and collected by your bank. In addition to that, the details of advance tax or self-assessment tax will also be included in it.

If some tax filing is missing from your new Form 26AS, you can call your employer and bank in the court. This also works the other way around.

The outstanding demands will also be enlisted on the new Form 26AS. This will help you in knowing if the demand is really outstanding or should you raise a dispute on it.

Details About Taxes And Proceedings

In addition to that, your pending income tax proceedings will also be mentioned in the new Form 26AS. Both the taxpayer and the Income Tax Departement will have to go to just one single place to look up for all pending cases and their details. It's a win-win situation for both parties.

Until now, Form 26AS only had a few info included in it about your financial transactions. But from now on, various details like banks, listed companies, mutual funds, registrar, stock exchanges, etc. will also be included in the Form 26AS, as they were already available to the department.

If your transactions for credit cards, foreign exchange, shares, and bond purchases exceed a certain threshold, the details of all these transactions will also be written on Form 26AS.

To understand it in simple words, the Income Tax Department has made sure that Form 26AS become the one-stop-shop for taxpayers.

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Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the Income Tax department has decided to revise its Income Tax Return (ITR) forms. The forms will be changed so that taxpayer citizens can get the benefits that the government has given as relief measures. 

The central finance ministry released an official note on Monday regarding the ITR form changes. It says that the government has given various timeline extensions to the citizens as a relief measure. But to fully avail it for the common people, the income tax department will revise the return forms for the financial year 2019-20 and the assessment year of 2020-21. The changes made will be notified to taxpayers by this month's end. 

The benefits given to taxpayers are for financial transactions made between April 1, 2020, to June 30, 2020. Financial world pundits are also speculating that the department will most likely extend the ITR filing deadline of July 31. 

Once the forms are changed, and the taxpayers notified, the department will also amend the software and return filing utility. All this procedure shall be completed before May 31. 

Talking to the media about this recent announcement, the director of Nangia Andersen Consulting, Mr. Shailesh Kumar, said that there is a small discrepancy in the time-period. While the taxpayers would have to make tax-saving investments by the end of June, the new ITR forms and utilities would be notified to taxpayers by the end of May. Hence there is lesser time for taxpayers to file the Income-tax return by July's end. To make sure every eligible person pays tax, the government will probably extend the ITR filing date. 

Almost every finance-related timelines and deadlines have been extended by the Finance Ministry, including the utilities of the Income Tax department and Reserve Bank of India. 

After announcing the Pan-India lockdown on March 25, the government ruled that the claims for payments that come under Section 80 C, 80D, and 80G (which includes Donations, Mediclaim and LIC, PPF, NSC, and mutual funds, etc.) are extended till the end of June. 

Usually, the ITR forms are notified to taxpayers once the financial year ends, i.e., March 30 or 31. Then the taxpayers have four months to file their Income Tax Returns before the end of July. However, this government broke the norms when it released the new forms called ITR-1 (Sahaj) and ITR-4 (Sugam) in January instead of March. Now, after Coronavirus spread and nationwide lockdown, every rule and norm is being changed as per necessity. 

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The last date of coronavirus lockdown in India is coming near but it is still wrapped in uncertainty and lots of loss for the economy of the country. The cases are rising with every passing day and chances are high that lockdown will be extended.

In this period of crisis, the government is trying to offer relief to the industry. This time, it has announced a big relief for the IT partners.

The Indian government has recently decided to issues all the pending income tax refunds of up to 5 lakh. It is being said that the step will benefit more than 14 lakh taxpayers.

Not just this, the government is also releasing the pending GST and custom refunds. This step will give relief to around one lakh business entities. In the press release, the government has also added Rs 18,000 crore worth of total refund would be granted.

Here is what the Finance Ministry said in the statement:

"In the context of the COVID-19 situation and with a view to provide immediate relief to the business entities and individuals, it has been decided to issue all the pending income-tax refunds up to Rs 5 lakh, immediately. This would benefit around 14 lakh taxpayers,

"It has also been decided to issue all pending GST and custom refunds which would provide benefit to around 1 lakh business entities, including MSME. Thus, the total refund granted will be approximately Rs. 18,000 crore."

These steps have been taken to balance the economic burden that is hanging over the Indian industries in the wake of novel coronavirus. People are welcoming this move and it is being said that the tax refund announcement is going to help large section of traders since they are facing cash flow challenges due to the lockdown.