It's mid-July already and those of you who have the liability to file the ITR for the previous financial year i.e. 2017-18 need to gear up fast as there are severe penalty implications this time around. And here are stated some good enough reasons, why you should begin filing tax return on your own.

1. Ease of filing and registering for filing ITR: If it is the first time that you are gearing to file ITR, you simply need to register on the e-filing portal whether it be government facilitated incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in or any other privately routed site that assist in e-filing.

After the login ID is created successfully, simply by following the steps that follow you will be able to file tax returns in a hassle free manner.

2. Availability of pre-population of pre-fill text option: Data available with the tax department in the nature of PAN details and form 26 AS is extracted due to the digitization move that makes the work of the concerned tax payer a lot easy as the personal and other tax details are pre-filled. The fling process with these changes have been brought about which have simplified the exercise for individual taxpayers.

3. Tax payment option linked to tax return form: To further ease down the process of filing tax return and payment of taxes, now the ITR form incorporates or features a link that takes the taxpayer to the portal using which he or she can make online or e-payment of taxes.

4. E-verification of tax returns: Then for the return to be duly considered as filed, there is a process called verification which in the previous era involved the sending of ITRV or acknowledgement of ITR filed to the CPC wing at Income tax department's Bengaluru office.

More so for the process, the department has come up with some 5 to 6 methods, using which tax payer can verify ITR electronically to be deemed as duly filed and then for Income tax department's further processing.

So, now the process has been rendered instantaneous as well as paperless. Further, e-verification through aadhaar has done away with the manual verification requirement.

5. E-assessment of ITRs: In case there is some conflict of interest or dispute, the process has now been simplified with the introduction of e-assessment wherein the different notices are now sent to the taxpayer's registered e-mail ID with the department. At the same time, this has been done to remove corruption practice from the system.

Herein the taxpayer, as a response to the government can also go or take the electronic way and sends its response electronically given the criticalness of the situation at hand. This way the processing shall even take a faster pace.

Self-filing of ITR by the taxpayer himself or herself will go a long way as then he will be more updated with the system. More so, taxpayer will be able to remain compliant with the department by following the Income tax department's initiatives and correspondence closely.

Also, the fact that the massive and aggressive clampdown of the government on tax-evasion and other black money transactions has been taken seriously and there has been a significant rise in the tax base with number of e-returns filed increasing to 5.28 Crore in the financial year 2016-17.

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