ITR filing season begins as income tax department launches ITR-1, ITR-4 utilities

The Income Tax Department has released Excel utilities for ITR-1 and ITR-4, allowing eligible taxpayers to start filing their income tax returns. The offline utilities are available for download on the IT department's e-filing portal. Taxpayers can use these utilities to fill in income and tax details offline, calculate their tax liability, generate a JSON file and upload it on the e-filing portal for submission and verification. This move is expected to help salaried individuals, pensioners, small business owners and professionals begin the filing process early.