Filing a return online comes down to five decisions and one step people forget. The decisions: which year you are filing for, which form applies, what the Annual Information Statement says about you, which tax regime you are choosing, and whether you owe anything before you submit. The forgotten step is e-verification — an unverified return is treated as never filed, and it is the commonest way a filing fails silently.
Where the calendar stands matters as much as the process. For AY 2026-27 the due date for a salaried filer was 31 July 2026, and as at our last check on 18 August 2026 no extension had been announced. Check the portal before you assume otherwise: utilities for some return types were released unusually late this year, and late utilities have historically preceded extensions. If the date has genuinely passed for you, you are filing a belated return, which changes what filing costs and takes one option off the table entirely.
Which year you are filing for
This is the first thing people get wrong, and it is the easiest to fix.
The financial year is the year you earned the money. The assessment year is the following year, in which that income is assessed. The return you file in mid-2026 is for FY 2025-26 — income earned between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2026 — and on the portal it is labelled AY 2026-27. Select AY 2026-27, not FY 2025-26 and not AY 2025-26.
There is a second naming trap now. The Income-tax Act, 2025 took effect on 1 April 2026 and repealed the Income-tax Act, 1961. The new Act uses the phrase “tax year”, and a tax year 2026-27 means the income of FY 2026-27 — a different year from AY 2026-27. Several secondary sources conflate the two. The portal’s own year selector is the one to trust.
Which ITR form applies to you
Choosing the wrong form is not a cosmetic error. The return gets treated as defective, the department issues a notice giving you a window to correct it, and if you do not respond in time the return can be treated as though it was never filed — with all the consequences of not filing.
Rather than reciting seven forms, work out which category you are in.
| Your situation | Form family |
|---|---|
| Resident individual, salary or pension, at most one house property, bank and other ordinary interest, within the income ceiling for the simplest form | ITR-1 |
| Capital gains, more than one house property, foreign income or foreign assets, unlisted shares, a directorship, or non-resident status | ITR-2 |
| Income from a business or profession | ITR-3, or ITR-4 where you are taxed presumptively and stay inside its limits |
| Firms, LLPs, companies, trusts and similar | ITR-5, ITR-6, ITR-7 |
The income ceiling and the exact conditions on the simplest form get adjusted from year to year — recent years have allowed a small amount of long-term capital gain from listed equity inside it, for instance. Read the current year’s applicability on the department’s own return applicable to me page rather than relying on what was true last year. The rule of thumb that holds: if you sold shares, mutual fund units or property during the year, the simplest form is probably not yours.
What to collect before you start
Half an hour of gathering saves a rework later.
- Form 16 from your employer — Part A shows TDS deposited, Part B shows the salary breakdown and how your employer computed the tax. If you changed jobs, you need one from each employer.
- The Annual Information Statement (AIS) and the Taxpayer Information Summary, downloaded from the portal. This is the department’s picture of your year.
- Form 26AS, also from the portal — the tax credit statement showing TDS, TCS and advance or self-assessment tax paid against your PAN.
- Interest certificates from every bank and post office, plus the interest figure on any recurring deposit or savings account.
- Capital gains statements from your broker and each AMC. Ask for the annual tax P&L rather than a transaction dump.
- Proof for every old-regime deduction you intend to claim: rent receipts and the landlord’s PAN where annual rent crosses ₹1,00,000, insurance and investment receipts, home loan interest certificate, and medical insurance premium receipts. None of this is uploaded, but you must be able to produce it if asked.
If you pay more than ₹50,000 a month in rent, note separately that you were required to deduct tenant TDS at 2% — a rate cut from 5% with effect from 1 October 2024. That obligation is yours, not your landlord’s, and it does not go away because you forgot.
Reconcile the AIS before you fill anything
This is where most notices come from, and it deserves more time than the rest of the process put together.
The AIS aggregates what banks, brokers, registrars, employers and property registrars have reported against your PAN. Your return is compared against it automatically. Any gap the system cannot explain becomes a proposed adjustment.
The mismatch that catches the largest number of ordinary salaried filers is fixed deposit interest. Banks report interest on an accrual basis. On a cumulative deposit, the interest earned each year is credited to the deposit and reported for that year, even though you receive nothing until maturity. Someone who reports only what actually landed in their savings account will under-report every year of the deposit’s life and then face a large mismatch at maturity. Report interest as it accrues — how FD interest is taxed works through this in detail.
TDS is a separate matter from the income itself. Banks deduct at 10% once interest from that payer crosses ₹50,000 in a financial year, or ₹1,00,000 for a senior citizen, and at 20% if they do not have your PAN. Deduction is not the final tax; it is an advance against it, and the return is what settles the difference. If a declaration to stop deduction was in place, the interest is still fully taxable even though no TDS appears at all. Which declaration that was depends on the year: Forms 15G and 15H applied through FY 2025-26, and Form 121 replaced them from 1 April 2026.
Work through the AIS line by line and use the feedback facility on anything wrong: a transaction that is not yours, a duplicate, or a figure belonging to another PAN. Feedback does not change your tax, but it records your position and is cheap insurance against an assessment built on someone else’s data.
Choosing the regime inside the return
The new regime is the default. Mind which statute you are reading about: the return you are filing now is computed under the Income-tax Act, 1961, where the new regime is section 115BAC, and the Income-tax Act, 2025 carries the same default forward as section 202 for income from FY 2026-27 onwards. The substance is unchanged. If you do nothing, you are taxed under the new regime: a ₹75,000 standard deduction for salaried filers, a rebate of up to ₹60,000 that takes tax to nil for total income up to ₹12,00,000, and almost none of the old deductions.
Selecting the old regime is an active choice, and for a taxpayer without business income it must be made in a return filed by the due date. There is no way to make it later. Someone with business income follows a different route, involving a separate prescribed form and a restricted ability to switch back — check the portal for the current requirement before filing.
Which is better depends entirely on how much you actually claim, not on how much you could theoretically claim. The old regime’s ₹50,000 standard deduction, HRA exemption, home loan interest and the deductions long known as 80C and 80D only beat the new regime’s wider slabs and larger rebate once they add up past a break-even point. Run both through the income tax calculator with your real numbers before you tick anything, and read old versus new tax regime if you want the reasoning rather than the output. If HRA is doing the heavy lifting in your old-regime case, check the HRA calculator first — only Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai take the 50% limit, and a claim computed on the wrong metro assumption is a claim that will not survive scrutiny.
One caution for anyone with capital gains: the rebate long known as section 87A is not available against income taxed at special rates. A total income under ₹12 lakh does not automatically mean nil tax if part of it is capital gains.
Pay what is due, submit, then e-verify
Before you submit, read the tax the utility has computed for you. Anything still payable after TDS and any advance tax is self-assessment tax, and it has to be paid through the portal’s e-pay facility and picked up in the return before you file. Submitting with a balance outstanding does not pause the interest running against it.
Verification is a separate act from submission, and the return does not exist until it happens.
The options are Aadhaar OTP to the mobile number registered with Aadhaar, an electronic verification code generated through net banking, a pre-validated bank account or demat account, a digital signature, or posting a signed physical ITR-V to the Centralised Processing Centre. The electronic routes take under a minute; the physical one takes weeks and can go missing.
You have a limited window after submission to verify, and the portal states it when you submit. Read it rather than assuming, because it has been shortened before. Where verification happens after the window, the date of verification can be treated as the date of filing — which is how an on-time return quietly becomes a late one. Check the status on the portal a day later: it should read as verified, and in due course as processed.
The deadlines, and what missing one costs
| Filer | Due date for AY 2026-27 |
|---|---|
| Salaried individuals and others not carrying on a business | 31 July 2026 |
| Business or professional income, no tax audit required | 31 August 2026 |
| Taxpayers requiring a tax audit | 31 October 2026 |
| Transfer pricing cases | 30 November 2026 |
| Belated return | 31 December 2026 |
| Revised return | 31 March 2027 |
No extension to any of these had been announced when we last checked. Confirm on the portal before you rely on the table — this is exactly the kind of thing that moves.
A belated return costs you four things. There is a late-filing fee, lower for small total incomes, which the portal computes and displays before you submit. Interest accrues monthly on any tax still unpaid, running from the due date. Certain losses — capital losses and business losses in particular — can only be carried forward if the return was filed on time, so a bad year in the market becomes permanently unusable against future gains. And, as above, the old regime is no longer available to you for that year.
A revised return is different and carries no penalty of its own. If you filed on time and then found an error — an omitted interest figure, a deduction claimed twice, the wrong bank account — file a revised return by 31 March 2027 and it replaces the original. A belated return can also be revised.
After you file
Processing happens at the Centralised Processing Centre, not at a local office. The return is matched against departmental data and you receive an intimation setting out the department’s computation alongside yours.
Refunds are credited only to a pre-validated bank account linked to your PAN, so validate it on the portal before you file rather than after the refund fails. Refunds follow processing, and processing follows verification — a delayed refund is very often an unverified return.
A mismatch notice is usually a communication proposing an adjustment where your return does not agree with the department’s data. It is not an accusation and it is not an audit. You respond on the portal within the window the notice states, either agreeing to the adjustment or explaining the difference with the document that supports it. Ignoring it is what turns a routine query into a demand. Our other tax explainers cover the recurring causes.
When to stop and use a professional
The portal is genuinely usable for a salaried filer with a Form 16, some bank interest and a handful of deductions. It is a poor place to learn on if any of the following apply:
- Capital gains across many transactions, especially with mixed holding periods, grandfathered cost, or units switched between plans. Getting the cost base wrong is expensive in both directions.
- Foreign income or foreign assets, including ESOPs in an overseas parent and any overseas bank account. Disclosure obligations here are strict and the penalties for getting them wrong are not proportionate to the sums involved.
- Business or professional income, including freelancing at any scale, where the choice between presumptive and regular taxation has consequences that last several years.
- A notice already received. Once the department has written to you, the cost of an amateur reply exceeds the fee.
Everyone else: gather the documents, reconcile the AIS honestly, choose the regime on arithmetic rather than habit, and verify the same day you submit.
Common questions
Can I still file my return after 31 July 2026?
Yes. A belated return for AY 2026-27 can be filed up to 31 December 2026. It is a real return and it is far better than not filing, but it costs you something: a late-filing fee, interest on any tax still unpaid, the loss of the right to carry forward certain losses, and — for a salaried filer who had not already filed — the ability to opt into the old regime. If you are owed a refund, filing late still gets it to you.
What happens if I submit my return but never e-verify it?
The return is treated as not filed. Nothing is processed, no refund is issued, and the department does not chase you about it, so people usually discover the problem months later when the refund never arrives. The safest habit is to verify in the same sitting you submit: the verification window is short, the portal states it at the moment you submit, and it has been shortened before. If it lapses, the date of verification can be treated as the date of filing, so an on-time return quietly becomes a late one.
Why does my AIS show fixed deposit interest I have not received?
Because the bank reports it on an accrual basis. On a cumulative deposit the interest is added to the deposit each year and reported for that year, even though nothing reaches your account until maturity. Match your return to the accrued figure rather than to your bank statement. And if you under-reported in earlier years, do not correct it by declaring the whole maturity amount in the year you finally receive it — that creates a fresh mismatch of its own, in a year when the AIS shows almost nothing.
Can I choose the old regime when filing a belated return?
No, not if you are a salaried or other non-business taxpayer who had not already filed. The new regime is the default, and choosing the old one is an active election that has to be made in a return filed by the due date. Miss the due date and the return is computed under the new regime, with its ₹75,000 standard deduction but without HRA exemption and without the deductions long known as 80C and 80D.
Do I have to file if my employer already deducted TDS?
Usually yes. TDS is an advance against your tax, not a substitute for the return. Filing is what reconciles the two — and it is the only way to recover an excess deduction. Filing is required where your total income before deductions exceeds the basic exemption limit, which is ₹4 lakh under the new regime, and in several other situations regardless of income. Someone whose tax comes to nil only because of the rebate still generally has to file.
Sources
Rates and rules on this page were read directly from the following sources on the dates shown. Figures change — if you are about to act on one, confirm it at the source.