ITR Forms Availability

ITR Forms Availability

For AY 2026-27 — income earned between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2026 — the CBDT has released seven ITR forms reflecting the new tax regime (Section 115BAC) as the statutory default, an expanded Schedule VDA requiring transaction-level disclosure of virtual digital assets, and more granular Schedule FA reporting for foreign holdings. If you file by 31 July 2026, you pay no late fee. If you file the wrong form, the return is treated as defective under Section 139(9). This guide tells you which form fits your income mix, when each utility goes live on the portal, and what you must report differently this year.

Which Form Covers Your Income? A Plain-English Eligibility Map

Each ITR form is designed for a specific taxpayer profile. Filing the wrong one is not just a technical error — the department issues a defective-return notice under Section 139(9) giving you 15 days to re-file in the correct form. Miss that window and the return is treated as not filed at all, triggering the late-fee clock retroactively.

ITR-1 (Sahaj)

Who can use it: Resident individuals (not HUFs) with total income up to Rs. 50 lakhs sourced entirely from:

• Salary or pension
• One house property (owned, with no carry-forward of house property loss)
• Other sources — bank interest, family pension, agricultural income up to Rs. 5,000

Who cannot use it: Non-residents, RNORs, directors in any company, holders of unlisted equity shares, anyone with capital gains of any kind, anyone with foreign assets or foreign income, and anyone with agricultural income above Rs. 5,000. If you received even one dividend from a foreign company or had TDS deducted under Section 195, move to ITR-2.

ITR-2

Who can use it: Individuals and HUFs without business or profession income, but who have any of the following:

• Capital gains — short-term or long-term, from shares, mutual funds, property, VDAs, or any other asset
• More than one house property
• Foreign assets or foreign income (Schedule FA is mandatory)
• Total income above Rs. 50 lakhs
• Non-resident or RNOR status

ITR-2 is the default choice for the vast majority of salaried taxpayers who have an investment portfolio. If you redeemed even a single mutual fund unit or sold any listed share during FY 2025-26, you must file ITR-2, not ITR-1.

ITR-3

Who can use it: Individuals and HUFs with income from a proprietary business or profession, including:

• Freelancers and consultants who are not opting for presumptive taxation
• Partners in a partnership firm (their share of profit plus salary drawn from the firm)
• Intraday equity traders (speculative business income)

ITR-3 requires a complete profit-and-loss account and balance sheet if turnover exceeds the prescribed threshold or if the taxpayer is not under the presumptive scheme.

ITR-4 (Sugam)

Who can use it: Resident individuals, HUFs and firms (excluding LLPs) opting for presumptive taxation under:

• Section 44AD: Business turnover up to Rs. 3 crore (subject to the digital-receipts condition)
• Section 44ADA: Professional gross receipts up to Rs. 75 lakhs
• Section 44AE: Goods-carriage operators

Total income must not exceed Rs. 50 lakhs, and the taxpayer must have no capital gains, no foreign assets, and no business income outside the presumptive scheme.

ITR-5, ITR-6 and ITR-7

• ITR-5: Firms, LLPs, AOPs, BOIs and similar entities. Mandatory for LLPs filing under the Income-tax Act 1961.
• ITR-6: Companies registered under the Companies Act 2013, except those claiming Section 11 exemption.
• ITR-7: Trusts, charitable institutions, political parties and entities required to file under Sections 139(4A), 139(4B), 139(4C) or 139(4D).

Four Steps to Confirm Your Correct ITR Form

Run through this sequence before you open any utility:

1. Map every income head. List every rupee of FY 2025-26 income: salary, rental income (how many properties?), capital gains from every asset class, business or professional receipts, interest, dividends, VDA transfers, and agricultural income.

1. Confirm residential status. Count your days in India during FY 2025-26. If you were physically present outside India for 182 days or more, your status may be non-resident — which changes your form choice, your foreign-asset disclosure obligations, and which tax treaty provisions apply.

1. Identify Schedule FA and Schedule VDA triggers. Do you hold any foreign bank account, foreign equity, or foreign immovable property? Did you have signing authority over a foreign account? Did you buy, sell, transfer, or receive any VDA — Bitcoin, Ethereum, NFTs, gaming tokens — at any point during the year? Either trigger locks you into ITR-2 (non-business individuals) or ITR-3 (business individuals).

1. Decide on presumptive taxation before you open the form. Once you opt out of Section 44AD for a year, you are barred from re-entering the scheme for the next five assessment years. The decision determines whether you file ITR-4 or ITR-3.

What Has Changed in the AY 2026-27 Forms

Default New Tax Regime and the Opt-Out Declaration

Under Section 115BAC, the new tax regime is the default for all individuals and HUFs. The AY 2026-27 ITR forms open in new-regime mode. To opt out, non-business taxpayers must make a clear declaration within the ITR itself (a specific checkbox or field in the form). Business taxpayers must also file Form 10-IEA on the e-filing portal on or before the return's due date.

Forgetting the opt-out costs you deductions under the entire Chapter VI-A — Section 80C, 80D, 80G, 80TTA and others — plus the House Rent Allowance exemption under Section 10(13A). If you have significant home-loan interest, LIC premiums, or health insurance premiums, run a side-by-side regime comparison with actual numbers before you open the form.

Finance Act 2025 revised the new-regime tax slabs effective FY 2025-26. The revised slabs and the enhanced Section 87A rebate (as notified) make the new regime materially more attractive at income levels up to and around Rs. 12 lakhs, where the rebate can bring the effective tax liability to nil.

Expanded Schedule VDA

Section 115BBH taxes income from Virtual Digital Assets (VDAs) at a flat 30% with no deduction allowed whatsoever — not Chapter VI-A, not even the basic exemption threshold. Loss from one VDA cannot be set off against any other income, and there is no carry-forward of VDA losses.

The AY 2026-27 Schedule VDA in ITR-2 and ITR-3 requires you to report:

• Asset category: Bitcoin, Ethereum, NFTs and other tokens must be reported separately
• Transaction-level detail: Acquisition cost, date of transfer, and consideration received for each transaction
• TDS credit reconciliation: If you transferred VDAs through a crypto exchange, the exchange would have deducted TDS at 1% under Section 194S on aggregate transfers above Rs. 50,000 in the year. This TDS appears in Form 26AS and AIS. Reconcile it against your Schedule VDA entries before submission.

A common misconception: if your overall crypto portfolio value has fallen, you still owe tax on every individual profitable transaction in FY 2025-26. A Rs. 1,50,000 gain on Bitcoin sold in June 2025 generates Rs. 45,000 in tax even if your Ethereum holdings lost Rs. 3,00,000 over the same period. The loss is not available for offset.

Schedule FA: Country-Wise Foreign Asset Disclosures

Schedule FA now requires country-wise disclosure of foreign bank accounts, foreign equity, foreign immovable property, ESOPs and RSUs in foreign-listed companies, and other foreign financial interests. If you hold RSUs in a US-listed employer, you must report the company name, country of incorporation, number of units held at year-start and year-end, units vested and sold during the year, and the peak INR value.

The stakes are high. Omitting foreign assets is not an income-tax-only risk. The Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015 provides for a flat 30% tax on the undisclosed asset's value plus a penalty of up to three times that value — completely separate from the Income-tax Act's own penalty provisions.

AIS/TIS Pre-Filling and the Feedback Loop

The Annual Information Statement (AIS) and Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS) — accessible at www.incometax.gov.in → Services → Annual Information Statement — pre-populate large portions of the ITR with bank interest, dividend income, securities transaction data, TDS, and increasingly, VDA transaction data from exchanges.

Pre-filled data is a starting point, not a final answer. The AIS sometimes carries duplicate entries, amounts that differ from Form 16A, or transactions misclassified by income head. If you accept an inflated pre-filled figure, you over-pay tax. If you delete a pre-filled entry without providing feedback, you expose yourself to scrutiny. The correct process: submit AIS feedback for any wrong entry, file the ITR with the corrected figure, and retain a screenshot of the feedback submission.

Portal Release Timeline: When Each Utility Goes Live

The CBDT follows a two-phase rollout each filing season.

Phase 1 — Offline utilities (released first): The offline JSON and Excel schema files are published under www.incometax.gov.in → Downloads → Offline Utilities. Utilities for ITR-1, ITR-2, ITR-3 and ITR-4 typically go live between April and May of the filing year. You can enter all data offline, run the validation tool, generate the JSON file, and upload it to the portal when you are ready.

Phase 2 — Online (prepare-and-submit) utility: The online utility for ITR-1 and ITR-4 — with automatic pre-filling from AIS/TIS — usually follows by May or June. ITR-2 and ITR-3 online utilities arrive later, typically in June. The online utility pulls pre-filled data from the portal once you authenticate with your PAN.

Critical: Check the version number of any utility you download. The CBDT releases updated versions mid-season to fix calculation or schema bugs. An outdated offline utility produces an upload error or, worse, a silently wrong return. The Downloads section shows the version number and release date alongside each utility.

As of late May 2026, offline utilities for the major forms should already be available on the portal. If you are ready with your documents, there is no reason to wait for the online utility.

Filing Deadlines for AY 2026-27

Late fee under Section 234F:

• Total income above Rs. 5 lakhs: Rs. 5,000 (one-time, not per day)
• Total income Rs. 5 lakhs or below: Rs. 1,000

Interest under Section 234A: If any tax is payable after 31 July 2026, interest accrues at 1% per month (simple, rounded up to the next full month) on the unpaid self-assessment tax from 1 August 2026 until the actual filing date. This is in addition to the late fee.

Worked Example: Salary, Equity Gains and Crypto — One Taxpayer, Three Schedules

Rajan is a resident software engineer in Bengaluru. His FY 2025-26 income:

Step 1 — Form selection: Rajan has LTCG and VDA income. He cannot use ITR-1. He has no business income, so ITR-3 is not required. He files ITR-2.

Step 2 — Regime selection: Rajan has minimal Chapter VI-A investments and no home loan. The new regime is cheaper. He files under new regime (Section 115BAC) — no separate Form 10-IEA needed since he has no business income; he makes the declaration within the ITR.

Step 3 — Tax on normal income (slab-based, new regime, FY 2025-26):

• Gross salary: Rs. 18,00,000
• Less standard deduction: Rs. 75,000
• Net salary: Rs. 17,25,000
• Add: savings-bank interest: Rs. 12,000 (Section 80TTA deduction not available under new regime)
• Total normal income: Rs. 17,37,000

Tax on Rs. 17,37,000 under revised new-regime slabs (as per Finance Act 2025):

Step 4 — Special-rate income:

• LTCG on listed equity (Section 112A): Rs. 2,00,000 total; Section 112A exemption: Rs. 1,25,000; Taxable LTCG: Rs. 75,000 @ 12.5% = Rs. 9,375
• VDA gain (Section 115BBH): Rs. 60,000 @ 30% = Rs. 18,000 (no offset, no exemption)

Note: The Section 87A rebate does not apply against tax on LTCG under Section 112A or VDA income under Section 115BBH — only against slab tax.

Step 5 — Total tax:

Rajan also checks his AIS and finds Rs. 600 in TDS deducted under Section 194S by his crypto exchange. He claims this as a tax credit in the ITR.

What if Rajan files late? Suppose he procrastinates and files on 20 September 2026 instead of 31 July 2026:

• Late fee (Section 234F): Rs. 5,000
• Interest (Section 234A) on unpaid tax @ 1% per month for 2 months: approximately Rs. 3,635
• Avoidable additional outflow: Rs. 8,635 — for doing nothing more than waiting.

Pitfalls That Cost Real Money: Common Filing Mistakes

Filing ITR-1 With Capital Gains

The most frequent mistake during peak filing season. Any capital gain — a single mutual fund redemption, an equity share sale, a debt fund switch — disqualifies you from ITR-1. The system accepts the upload but generates a defective-return notice under Section 139(9). You have 15 days from the notice date to re-file in ITR-2. Missing the notice means the return is void.

Fix: Before selecting any form, download your Consolidated Account Statement (CAS) from CAMS or KFintech and your broker's capital-gains report. If any transaction appears, open ITR-2.

Treating All Crypto Losses as Offsetting Gains

Section 115BBH is unambiguous: no loss from VDA can be set off against any other income, and no VDA loss can be carried forward. Profitable trades must be reported and taxed at 30% even if the overall portfolio is in the red.

Fix: Calculate gains and losses at the individual transaction level. Report all profitable transactions in Schedule VDA and pay the 30% tax. Document your loss transactions too — they are disclosed in the schedule even if they yield no tax benefit.

Claiming Section 80C / 80D Deductions Under the New Regime

Section 115BAC(2) explicitly removes Chapter VI-A deductions from the new-regime calculation. Yet several third-party utilities have historically auto-populated deduction fields irrespective of the selected regime.

Fix: After data entry, cross-check the regime selection against the deduction fields. In the new regime, the form should zero out all Chapter VI-A entries. If they do not zero out, your utility has a bug. Switch to the official CBDT offline JSON utility for the final computation.

Accepting AIS Pre-Fills Without Reconciliation

A bank may have reported interest income under multiple categories in AIS, causing the same amount to appear twice. A broker may have reported the gross sale consideration rather than the net gain. Accepting pre-fills without verification results in either over-reporting income (and overpaying tax) or under-reporting (and inviting scrutiny).

Fix: Treat AIS as a cross-reference document, not a source of truth. Check every AIS entry against your own records. Use the AIS feedback facility to flag incorrect entries, then file based on actual figures.

Missing Schedule FA for RSUs and ESOPs

Employees of multinational companies often receive RSUs or ESOPs in foreign-listed entities. Many do not realise that even unvested units may need to be disclosed in Schedule FA once they have a beneficial interest in them. Omission is treated under the Black Money Act, not just the Income-tax Act.

Fix: Contact your employer's equity compensation or stock-plan team to get the vesting and holding details in INR equivalent for FY 2025-26. Report every foreign equity holding, regardless of whether you sold any units during the year.

Offline vs Online Utility: Which Should You Use?

Online (prepare-and-submit) utility — best for:

• ITR-1 and ITR-4 filers with simple profiles
• Taxpayers who want AIS/TIS pre-filling to kick in automatically
• Situations where you can complete the filing in one session without losing data

Offline JSON utility — preferred for:

• ITR-2 and ITR-3 returns with capital-gains schedules, VDA entries, foreign-asset schedules and business income
• Anyone who wants to work through the data carefully without internet-dependency or session timeouts
• Returns that will be reviewed by a tax professional before submission

Always download the latest version of the utility from www.incometax.gov.in → Downloads → Offline Utilities. The version number and release date appear next to the download link. A mid-May utility may have bug fixes not present in the April release.

If you use third-party software, cross-check the computed tax figures against a manual calculation or the CBDT utility before uploading. The final ITR PDF preview — available after submission acknowledgement — is your confirmation of what was actually filed.

Preparing While the Online Form Is Not Yet Live

The gap between 31 March 2026 and the form's online availability is not downtime. Every hour invested here saves two in July.

1. Download AIS and Form 26AS now. Verify every TDS entry, advance-tax challan and high-value transaction. Raise AIS feedback immediately for any wrong entry — it takes the department time to process feedback, so earlier is better.
2. Collect capital-gains statements. AMCs and brokers issue consolidated statements by May. Reconcile these with your portfolio records. Note the cost-of-acquisition, holding period, and whether the LTCG exemption threshold applies.
3. Export your full VDA transaction history from every exchange you used in FY 2025-26. Calculate the gain or loss on each transaction individually. Do not rely on the exchange's P&L summary — calculate independently.
4. Run the regime comparison with actual numbers. Use your real salary, real deductions under 80C/80D, real home-loan interest, and real HRA to compare both regimes. The result is definitive and should not be reversed mid-filing.
5. Check days of India presence if you travelled internationally during FY 2025-26. If the count is borderline, calculate under Section 6(1) and Section 6(6) before choosing your form.
6. Gather Form 16. Employers must issue Form 16 by 15 June 2026. If you changed jobs during the year, you need Form 16 from each employer. The sum of salary figures from all Form 16s — not just the last employer — is your total salary income.

Key Takeaways

• Capital gains of any amount = ITR-2 at minimum. A single mutual fund redemption disqualifies you from ITR-1. Filing the wrong form creates a defective return and restarts the compliance clock.
• VDA gains are taxed at 30% flat, transaction by transaction. Loss on one token does not offset gain on another. Reconcile Section 194S TDS credits from your exchange against your Schedule VDA before filing.
• New regime is the default; opt-out requires a deliberate, dated declaration. Non-business taxpayers opt out within the ITR. Business taxpayers must file Form 10-IEA on or before the due date.
• 31 July 2026 is the cost-free deadline. Filing after that date costs Rs. 5,000 in late fee under Section 234F plus 1% per month interest under Section 234A on any unpaid tax — entirely avoidable.
• AIS pre-fills need verification, not blind acceptance. Reconcile every pre-filled figure against your own records and submit feedback for errors before the return is filed.
• Foreign assets — including unvested RSUs — must appear in Schedule FA. Omissions fall under the Black Money Act, which carries penalties up to three times the asset's value.
• Always use the latest utility version. Download from www.incometax.gov.in → Downloads and check the release date. Mid-season schema updates fix real calculation errors; the April version may not reflect them.