Efiling of your IT return is now mandatory for individual, including salaried taxpayers having taxable income of more than INR 5 Lakhs during the financial year ended March 31st 2013. Prior to this notification, efiling was mandatory for individuals having a taxable income for more than INR 10 Lakhs.
Because of this amendment, most of the taxpayers having taxable income of more than INR 5 Lakhs need to file IT return online from assessment year 2013-2014 onwards.
Taxpayers efiling there IT return online need to send ITR V form to IT office, CPC, Bangalore before 120 days of filing there IT return online. Even though it’s not mandatory, a salaried person can file his IT return online with digital signature. If you are filing your IT return with digital signature then the acknowledgment generated after efiling is not required to be sent to CPC, Bangalore office.
An individual having income from salary, house property and other sources (like bank interest) has to file his IT return in IT return form 1 (ITR 1). If you have income from other sources or losses from above heads then the IT return form to be filed with the IT department is different. For more details on the types of forms please read this article
Individuals having income less then INR 5 Lakhs are not required to file there ITR online. They can file there ITR in paper format. However such individuals has an option of filing there ITR in electronic format at the IT efiling website.
In a recent change to IT act, a salaried person having income less then INR 5 Lakhs and a income from bank interest of less then INR 10, 000 in a year will be exempted from filing their ITR if conditions mentioned under IT act has been full filled. One of such condition is, if the salaried individual has been employed in more than one place during the financial year then such exemption of IT filing will not be applicable.
One of the benefit of filing you ITR online is your refund process will be faster compare to filing in paper format. In refund cases it’s advised to file your ITR online even though it’s not mandatory for you to file your ITR electronically.
