New Form 26AS introduced by CBDT

• Faceless hand-holding of the Taxpayers

Government of India, Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance and Central Board of Direct Taxes has come out with a New Form 26AS which is the Faceless hand-holding of the Taxpayers to provide full details of their financial transactions.

The aim is to prevent the suppression of information by taxpayers. The taxpayers’ tax passbook or the Form 26AS contains details of taxpayer and compliance details along with other financial transactions.

• The modified process with New form 26 AS:

Information being received by the Income Tax Department from the filers of Statement of Financial Transactions (SFTs) now being shown in Part E of Form 26AS to facilitate voluntary compliance, tax accountability and ease of e-filing of returns so that the same can be used by the taxpayer to file her or his income tax return (ITR) by calculating the correct tax liability in a feel-good environment.

• Key highlights:

1. It helps to e-file income tax returns quickly and correctly.
2. The new form required some additional details on taxpayers’ financial transactions.
3. This form will bring transparency and accountability in the tax administration.
4. SFTs will help the taxpayers to recall all their major financial transactions so that they have a ready reckoner to enable them while filing the ITR.
5. Information under different SFTs will be shown in the new Form 26AS which includes:

• Cash deposit
• withdrawal from saving bank accounts,
• sale/purchase of immovable property,
• time deposits,
• credit card payments,
• purchase of shares,
• debentures,
• foreign currency,
• mutual funds,
• buyback of shares,
• cash payment for goods and services, etc.
• banks, mutual funds, institutions issuing bonds and registrars or sub-registrars, etc., with regard to individuals having high-value financial transactions

6. Form 26AS for any taxpayer will display in part E of the Form, different fields such as type of transaction, name of SFT filer, date of transaction, single/joint party transaction, number of parties, amount, mode of payment, and remarks, etc.

• Conclusion:

1. This New form 26 AS will help honest taxpayers with updated financial transactions while filing their returns,
2. it will desist those taxpayers who inadvertently conceal financial transactions in their returns.
3. The new Form 26AS would also have information on transactions that used to be received up to Financial Year 2015-16 in the Annual Information Returns.

Kindly note that:

financial transactions will be shown in 26AS only if taxpayers cross the specified limit in a financial year.

Source: Press Release

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