India's personal tax compliance framework is undergoing a decisive transformation driven by digitisation, pre-filled data integration, and the introduction of simplified tax regimes by the Indian Income Tax department. According to The Times of India, the ITR forms for FY 2025-26 (AY 2026-27) underscore this evolution, signalling a shift from basic disclosures to more rigorous requirements for accurate, consistent, and comprehensive reporting by taxpayers. This transformation helps authorities navigate fast processing of tax returns as cross verification of claims between individual ITR and business reporting becomes easier.
The Income Tax Department has made excel utilities for ITR-2 and ITR-3 forms available for FY 2024-25 (AY 2025-26) filing, with the extended deadline set for September 15, 2025. As reported by The Times of India, taxpayers can download these utilities from the income tax department's e-filing portal, which will be extracted as a Windows zip file containing various schedules for information entry. The department announced on July 11, 2025, that these utilities are now live and available for filing, though online filing through the e-filing portal remains unavailable until further notification.
The updated ITR-3 form includes several significant improvements for taxpayers with business income. According to The Times of India, the asset and liability reporting threshold has been increased to ₹1 crore of total income, making filing simpler for taxpayers whose total income ranges from ₹50 lakh to ₹1 crore. Key updates include schedule-wise capital gain splitting for gains before/after July 23, 2024 (post Finance Act 2024 changes), capital loss on share buyback allowed if corresponding dividend income is shown as income from other sources (post October 1, 2024), and enhanced reporting for deductions under sections 80C and 10(13A). The form also includes provisions for Section 44BBC requiring specific disclosures for taxpayers engaged in shipping or cruise business operations.
Under the revised framework, Form 121 replaces the previous Forms 15G and 15H, creating a unified approach for taxpayers seeking tax exemption on estimated income. According to the latest updates, a single UIN will be allotted by the department for each PAN for a given tax year, with all declarations furnished by the same taxpayer to different payers linked to this one UIN. This eliminates the previous duplication where each payer or deductor generated separate UINs even for the same taxpayer and tax year. The new form provides uniform computation tables for each category of receipt such as additional salary, gratuity, pension and other eligible arrears/receipts, bringing greater clarity and transparency to taxpayer inputs.
For most individual taxpayers, the due date continues to be 31 July following the end of the year except for individuals having business or professional income. According to The Times of India, delays can trigger late filing fees, interest liabilities, restrictions on carry forward of certain losses, and slower processing of refunds. Taxpayers should initiate preparation well ahead of the filing deadline by collating supporting documentation and carefully reviewing schedule-wise disclosures to ensure accuracy and completeness. The extended deadline of September 15, 2025, for FY 2024-25 (AY 2025-26) filing provides additional time for taxpayers to utilize the new excel utilities for filing their returns.
