Overview
- The Central Board of Direct Taxes has opened a 15-day consultation through February 22 on draft rules and forms via an OTP-validated utility on the e-filing portal.
- The framework consolidates the rulebook from 511 to 333 rules and trims forms from 399 to 190, with navigators mapping legacy provisions and forms to the proposed versions.
- Redesigned income-tax return forms are positioned as smart, technology-enabled filings with prefilled data, automated reconciliation and centralised processing to reduce errors and duplication.
- Commonly used documents are renumbered and consolidated, including Form 16 to Form 130, Form 26AS to Form 168, and audit reports in Forms 3CA/3CB/3CD merged into a single Form 26.
- Taxpayer-facing proposals in the draft include higher perquisite thresholds, adding Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad to the higher HRA bracket, new PAN-quoting norms for select transactions, recognition of CBDC for e-payments and information-sharing by crypto exchanges.